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Testing has taken center stage in today's era of increased accountability in public education. But only one test promises to measure student achievement across the country, across demographic groups, and across decades: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the "Nation's Report Card."

NAEP is a series of assessments in math, reading, and other subjects. It is given regularly to national samples of fourth, eighth, and 12th-grade students to determine both what they do know and what they should know. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), located in the U.S. Department of Education, administers NAEP, and the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), a bipartisan board composed of governors, state and local education officials, business leaders, teachers, principals, measurement experts, and parents, oversees and sets policy for the test. Both NCES and NAGB rely on testing contractors to develop, score, and report on the program. The Educational Testing Service (ETS), the testing giant responsible for the SAT, Advanced Placement exams, the Graduate Record Examination, the PRAXIS series used for teacher certification, and the English language test TOEFL, has been the primary NAEP contractor since 1983. Other major contractors include Pearson, an international media and testing company, and Westat, a research corporation.

Since NAEP was created in 1969, it has become a trusted resource. Its scores are widely cited in the media to describe national achievement levels, trends, and gaps in student performance. The publication Education Week recently described the test as the "most influential research study and information source of the past decade." NAEP data are also used by researchers and commentators as a proxy for evaluating the rigor of state standards and to assess educational progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In May, for instance, when NCES reported increases in NAEP history and civics results, observers used the information to tout the benefits of NCLB in improving student achievement across all subjects.

But what NAEP can and cannot tell us about student performance is often not well understood. The test design is technically complicated, leading to difficulty in interpreting and reporting its results. Scores, for instance, can not always be compared across grade levels or even across subjects. While a score of 240 on a fourth-grade reading test might indicate a student is proficient, the same score on an eighth-grade math assessment could mean the student is below proficiency. Such complexity leads to misinterpretations by the media and the public.

NAEP, moreover, is constantly changing. Like other standardized tests that influence policy, NAEP has been forced to expand its design and implementation to meet demands for more detailed information about the state of American education. What started out as a $1.9-million-a-year single measure of national student achievement is now an $88-million-a-year program, with multiple tests examining trends at the district, state, and national levels. And policymakers and educators continue to call for NAEP's expansion—most recently proposing its use as a measure of curricula effectiveness, an anchor for other assessments, an accountability tool, and an international comparison benchmark. Calls for further expansion persist even though the test is not designed to meet many of these objectives and cannot be expected to without a significant and costly overhaul.

And, despite its extensive use and valued reputation, NAEP is not without controversy. Testing officials have faced concerns about low participation rates among 12th-graders and the exclusion of some students with disabilities from testing. And a host of bodies have criticized the process testing officials use to create NAEP's achievement levels (basic, proficient, advanced) and how those levels are defined.

Still, NAEP remains an extremely important source of data, one of the only tools for reliably comparing student achievement across states and demographic groups and the only nationwide longitudinal assessment of student achievement in the nation. Fully understanding both the mechanics of NAEP and its controversies is essential for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners seeking to know how students are currently performing in a range of academic subjects and how performance has changed over time.

This Education Sector Explainer discusses NAEP's origin and its expanding role, describes how the test is designed, how its scores are calculated and what those scores mean. It examines the controversies surrounding the reporting and use of NAEP data. And it examines the challenges facing the Nation's Report Card in a climate of relentless demands for more information on student achievement.…Please download the full Explainer (above right).

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.