A Pragmatic Future for NAEP: Containing Costs and Updating Technologies

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) - often called The Nation’s Report Card - is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what students in public and private schools in the United States know and can do in various subjects and has provided policy makers and the public with invaluable information on U.S. students for more than 50 years.

Unique in the information it provides, NAEP is the nation’s only mechanism for tracking student achievement over time and comparing trends across states and districts for all students and important student groups (e.g., by race, sex, English learner status, disability status, family poverty status). While the program helps educators, policymakers, and the public understand these educational outcomes, the program has incurred substantially increased costs in recent years and now costs about $175.2 million per year.

A Pragmatic Future for NAEP: Containing Costs and Updating Technologies recommends changes to bolster the future success of the program by identifying areas where federal administrators could take advantage of savings, such as new technological tools and platforms as well as efforts to use local administration and deployment for the tests. Additionally, the report recommends areas where the program should clearly communicate about spending and undertake efforts to streamline management. The report also provides recommendations to increase the visibility and coherence of NAEP’s research activities.