There are no shortages when it comes to government acronyms, especially in assessment. Keeping track of them all, however, can be a test all on its own. So, to prep you for the upcoming public scores release on January 29, let’s walk through what “NAEP” is, what it stands for, and why OSSE cares about what these scores have to say.

If you’ve never heard of it: NAEP stands for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It has a few aliases, but the most common one is The Nation’s Report Card. While glib, this nickname isn’t wholly inaccurate: NAEP aims to measure how well students across the nation perform in certain subject matters, most commonly math and reading, but other subjects, like civics, science, and US history, have all been assessed in the past. By looking at the NAEP scores, both historical and the ones about to be released, OSSE can get an idea of the achievement of District students nationally and District-wide as a current snapshot and compare them to past performances.

So, NAEP is an assessment? Yes, correct! NAEP is primarily an assessment in mathematics and reading for fourth- and eighth-grade students. While 12th grade has been assessed, and other subjects have been assessed, those two subjects and grades are constant across all years. NAEP has been around since 1969 but how it exists in its current form began in the 1990s. Students everywhere in the United States have been taking the NAEP assessment for more than 30 years, which gives OSSE an immense amount of data and the ability to look through time and see quantifiable progress. This is actually one of the core tenets of why NAEP exists: Because it has been around for decades, and because the assessment is the same for everyone, OSSE has the unique ability to look at NAEP scores as a proxy for which direction students’ learning is headed. While you might not remember it, it is very possible you took NAEP in school.

Who takes NAEP? Everyone? Not necessarily. NAEP operates every year, but not every year is the same scale. NAEP has a two-year cycle – one year is a “big” year, with lots of schools sampled, and one year is a "small" year with few, if any schools that are sampled. The exact number of students and schools that get picked vary from state to state, but here in the District, OSSE can get some approximations. In a "big" year, which now fall on even years, anywhere from 90-150 schools can be sampled, with the number of students taking the one-day assessment being counted in the thousands. In a "small" year, on odd years, DC might have only a small handful of schools sampled, with only a couple hundred students possibly being sampled. Some small years, DC schools aren’t sampled at all!

So, will we see how well our kids did? How does that make it different than some other test like DC CAPE? Actually … no! Individual scores aren’t released. Neither are school scores, or even as high as the local education agency (LEA) level. NAEP will only ever release scores in three ways – (1) nationally, (2) statewide, and (3) occasionally in large city format. That means NAEP is important to DC in three different ways. OSSE will see how well the country as a whole is doing, how well DC the “state” does, and how well DC performs as a city. All three are different, but DC the “state” and DC the “city” are usually pretty close in performance. State scores include everyone in the city: public schools, charter schools, and any private schools that want to participate. City scores are only DC public schools. Each are valuable in their own way, and OSSE can extract a lot from each of those data releases.

Note: In those small years, OSSE only ever gets national-level scores. NAEP can be a logistical undertaking, so OSSE uses those small years to do all sorts of things to keep NAEP valid, like doing pilot tests and long-term trend assessments to make sure that during the "big" years, the assessment remains the gold standard for testing.

This sounds like a lot for our students. Can you convince me this is worth it with all our other tests? While OSSE doesn’t get individual scores, these results can help shape a lot of how OSSE views things on a local, city-wide level. Firstly, NAEP is a great benchmark for OSSE’s own assessments. OSSE knows that NAEP scores are valid and go through rigorous quality control. OSSE can use those performance metrics to compare to its own rigorous testing here in the District. OSSE can use NAEP to compare and contrast and find ways to talk about how well District students perform, and OSSE can use NAEP to make its own statewide testing better.

Moreso, NAEP can be used to guide and drive positive growth through legislation – by revealing the good and the bad when it comes to test scores, OSSE knows where it has succeeded and where it needs to improve and pay attention. NAEP was one of, if not the first assessment, to take achievement gaps seriously and prove them statistically. By acknowledging that certain populations and demographics are far behind some of their peers, we can take appropriate measures to ensure equitable success for everyone.

Lastly, NAEP is Congressionally mandated – which means that students are taking it one way or another. Everyone has to participate, which is honestly a great idea – by having the whole nation on board, OSSE can see what everyone is doing to tackle tough issues together.

The last time OSSE received its DC NAEP scores, we saw our first glimpse into a post-pandemic world for assessment and student learning. We faced some hard truths and turned that into serious optimism and action. This time, OSSE hopes to see recovery and a path forward to the best future for District kids. While just one small bucket of information, NAEP acts as a great mirror to show OSSE how it can best serve the District’s children.

OSSE’s resident NAEP specialist, who wrote this post, is happy to answer any and all questions! Please reach out to [email protected] if you’ve got questions or comments, especially after our scores get released!