Committee on the Evaluation of NAEP

Committee on the Evaluation of the National and State Assessments of Educational Progress

The Committee on the Evaluation of NAEP was established in 1996 in response to a congressional mandate (in P.L. 103-382, the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994). The Committee is conducting a three-year evaluation of key aspects of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP is a federally funded, congressionally mandated program that periodically tests the educational achievement of the nation's students in grades 4, 8, and 12.

The study plan developed by the Committee focuses on three evaluation strands: 1) NAEP’s mission, measurement objectives, and reconceptualization; 2) sampling, data collection, analysis, reporting, and data utility; and 3) framework and test development, field testing, and achievement-level setting (with emphasis on evaluating whether NAEP’s developmental performance levels are reasonable, valid, and informative). For each area, committee members are examining the large body of evaluation research generated by NAEP's sponsors, contracting agencies, advisory bodies, technical reviewers, and prior evaluation panels and commissioning papers and research studies on questions of particular importance to the evaluation.

The Committee consists of sixteen experts in survey design and sampling, psychometrics, performance assessment, educational measurement, and educational policy analysis, and has met eight times from March 1996 through February 1998. The Committee has also conducted workshops in conjunction with two of these meetings: the first, in December 1996, focused on models for standard setting and their implications for setting achievement levels in NAEP; the second, in May 1996, focused on NAEP’s mission and measurement objectives and on developing a vision for a reconceptualized NAEP. The Committee will deliver a final report in fall 1998.

JAMES W. PELLEGRINO (Chair), Frank W. Mayborn Professor of Cognitive Studies, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Learning Technology Center, Vanderbilt University, Nashville
GAIL BAXTER, Research Scientist, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ
NORMAN M. BRADBURN, Senior Vice President for Research, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago
THOMAS P. CARPENTER, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison
ALLAN COLLINS, Professor of Education and social Policy, Institute of Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
PASQUALE J. DEVITO, Director, Assessment and Information Services, Rhode Island Department of Education, Providence
STEPHEN B. DUNBAR, Professor of Educational Measurement and Statistics, College of Education, University of Iowa, Iowa City
LARRY V. HEDGES, Stella M. Rowley Professor of Education and the Social Sciences, Department of Education, University of Chicago
SHARON LEWIS, Director of Research, Council of the Great City Schools, Washington, DC
RODERICK J.A. LITTLE, Professor and Chairman, Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
ELSIE G.J. MOORE, Associate Professor and Academic Program Coordinator, Life-Span Developmental Psychology, College of Education, Arizona State University, Tempe
NAMBURY S. RAJU, Director, Center for Research and Service, and Distinguished Professor, Institute of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
MARLENE SCARDAMALIA, Head, Centre for Applied Cognitive Science and Professor, Department of Measurement, Evaluation and Computer Applications, CACS/Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto
GUADALUPE VALDÉS, Professor, School of Education and Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Stanford University, CA
SHEILA W. VALENCIA, Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle
LAURESS L. WISE, President, Human Resources Research Organization, Alexandria, VA