Focus on NAEP

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The Focus on NAEP web environment offers comprehensive and accessible articles, analysis highlights, data stories, and multimedia to describe aspects of the NAEP program. Articles showcase findings and key elements of the development and implementation of NAEP. Analysis highlights explain research and demonstrate the analytical power of NAEP data when combined with other data sets. Data stories place NAEP data in a contextual narrative, telling compelling stories about student groups. Multimedia products describe and visualize data.

First administered in 1969, NAEP is the largest nationally representative assessment of what students across the United States know and can do. It assesses fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students in various subjects.

Performance & Preparedness Overview

FEATURED

Explore how NAEP grade 12 assessments in mathematics and reading can be used to understand whether twelfth-grade students in the nation are prepared for postsecondary life.

The Story of NAEP

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a continuing and nationally representative measure of trends in academic achievement of U.S. elementary and secondary students in various subjects. It is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what our nation's students know and can do in select subjects. It was first administered in 1969 to measure student achievement nationally. Teachers, principals, parents, policymakers, and researchers all use NAEP results to assess progress and develop ways to improve education in the United States. Read more

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located within the U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences, is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. Learn more about NCES