National Academies Release Recommendations for Modernizing NAEP

On March 24, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) released the report ”A Pragmatic Future for NAEP: Containing Costs and Updating Technologies,” which provides recommendations to improve the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Congressionally-mandated assessment administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The report, which is the culmination of one of several NASEM activities related to education research and statistics (see previous coverage), focuses on reducing the costs of administering NAEP and identifying ways to incorporate modern technologies and systems to automate the administrative needs of NAEP. Some of the recommendations in the report include: NCES should develop clear descriptions of current spending on NAEP and ensure the budget can support any major programmatic decisions; NCES should consider structural changes to the assessments including the integration of subjects, the modernization of long-term trend assessment, and the addition of smaller, more frequent updates to the NAEP framework; NCES should commission an independent audit of NAEP management and increase the visibility of NAEP; A greater percentage of the budget should go towards innovations that will increase the use and understanding of NAEP data; NCES should evaluate options when developing technologies for assessment administration, including the Next-Gen eNAEP platform. The report is available on the National Academies website.