National Assessment of Educational Progress

Also known as “The Nation's Report Card,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) originated in response to demands for indicators of the results of large government expenditures for curriculum development in the aftermath of Sputnik and the country's fear that the Russians educational system was exceeding that of the United States. Billed as the gold standard of education assessments and the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what U.S. students know and can do, it is currently administered periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. The instrument today, however, is different in both form and function from what was originally envisioned by its creators, most notably Ralph Tyler. Varied interpretations of NAEP's key purpose are suspected as the cause for its several incarnations since the first version in 1969. Disagreement on the matter of purpose was present even at NAEP's inception, as can be noted by the stories of two key players, Tyler and Francis Keppel, the U.S. Commissioner of Education. Keppel was seeking precise data to support policies of the federal government and turned for advice to Tyler, whose reputation as head of evaluation for the Eight Year Study and experience as director of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford made him a logical choice. Tyler agreed in 1963 to chair the Exploratory Committee on Assessing the Progress of Education (ECAPE), to be underwritten by the Carnegie Corporation. He recognized the inadequacy of existing standardized tests for providing information about the educational attainments of large numbers of people of various ages over time. The task of providing the census-type portrait of U.S. educational achievement and the wealth of information it could provide for educators required an objectives-based model, akin to that of the Tyler Rationale.

The difference in Tyler and Keppel's motivations is subtle, but powerful, and concern over the connection of educational assessment to public policy making was one of the first difficulties Tyler had to negotiate. Historically, curriculum scholars have had qualms about standardized testing. As early as the 1927 Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, they noted it as one of the most effective forms of curriculum control, and they decried its tendency to emphasize memory of facts to the neglect of more dynamic instructional outcomes. Even some of ECAPE's members expressed misgivings that NAEP might eventually drive a national curriculum. School administrators, stung by criticism after Sputnik, were especially concerned, fearing both the loss of local control and the use of assessment for comparison purposes.

Tyler labored to allay the fears of administrators and state superintendents. Citizen panels were formed to provide input on appropriate learning objectives for the targeted ages of 9, 13, 17, and “young adult.” The assessment was designed to consist of “exercises”—short-answer questions and performance tasks, as well as multiple-choice items. They would be read aloud for subjects other than reading, so that even poor readers could demonstrate what they knew. Because the goal was to provide the public with concrete, specific evidence of the skills and knowledge of respondents, reporting by overall test score would have no meaning. Instead, results would be reported for individual exercises, showing the estimated percentage of the population or subgroups that answered each [Page 600]exercise correctly. ECAPE committed to reporting results by age and demographic group, but not by state, school, or individual.

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