The mission of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is to provide, in a timely manner, a fair and accurate measurement of educational achievement in reading, mathematics, and other content areas including writing, science, history, geography, civics, economics, foreign languages and the arts. NAEP assessments track educational achievement in grades 4, 8, and 12 at the national and regional levels, and, in some subjects and grades, in states, as well as in the large urban school districts that participate in the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA). NAEP also reports on national long term trend assessments in reading and mathematics for students at ages 9, 13, and 17. NAEP is administered by the Assessment Division (AD) within the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES).
To fulfill the responsibility of its mandate, the NCES NAEP program has set forth a strategic plan for NAEP as 1) the most authoritative source of information concerning patterns and trends in the academic achievement of American youth; and 2) a model of excellence and innovation in large-scale assessment.
This cooperative agreement opportunity is one avenue in which NAEP continues its pursuit of keeping an accurate measure of student progress and advancing the field of large-scale assessment. The goal of the NAEP Cooperative Agreements is to provide opportunities to address known challenges and bring new ideas and innovations to NAEP.
AIR, on behalf of NCES, is soliciting applications for funding work to be conducted collaboratively with NCES NAEP staff or their contractors. Funds will be used to support development, research, and analysis to advance NAEP’s testing administrations; scoring; analysis and reporting; conduct secondary data analysis; and product development.
More information about the most recently awarded cooperative agreements can be found here.