International Assessment of Educational Progress

The International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) was created in 1988 for the purpose of international comparative studies. The IAEP collects and reports data on what students around the world can achieve academically.

The first IAEP was conducted to evaluate achievement in math and science of samples from students in five countries—Ireland, Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States—and four Canadian provinces. In 1991, the second assessment was conducted to assess math and science skills of 9- and 13-year-old students from as many as 20 countries.

The earlier version of the International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP-I) consisted of math and science questions derived from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP is an ongoing, congressionally mandated project designed to conduct national surveys of the educational attainments of students in the United States. Besides assessing math and science, the IAEP-I included questions about students' school experiences and attitudes. Measurement specialists from the United States and participating countries worked in translating and adapting the techniques used in the United States for the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Like the previous version, the IAEP-II assessed math and science and included questions about students' backgrounds and home and school experiences. To assemble the tests, curriculum experts focused on common curriculum elements across countries to reach a consensus that produced the mathematics and science frameworks used in the development of the IAEP-II. However, some critics would argue that making comparisons of school quality across cultures is very difficult to interpret because each country has its own educational traditions and practices. For instance, the comparability of the student samples has been questioned because students in the United States remain in school for longer periods of time and are therefore part of the high [Page 484]school test sample. In other countries, only the top students remain in school and are tested.

Despite the opinions of the critics, each of the countries that participated in these international comparative studies did so for its own reasons: to compare its results with those of other countries, to learn about the educational policies and practices of countries whose students seem to regularly achieve academic success, and to establish a baseline of data within its own country against which progress could be measured in the future.