A Researcher's Guide to The Nation's Report Card

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, the only nationally representative database of academic performance for students, produces a wealth of information for researchers interested in the performance of the nation's students.

In this section, you will find

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), chosen to address some of the questions and concerns you might have as a researcher, and
• Contacts, in case you have further questions about the assessment.

To examine the assessments in greater detail, explore the Downloads and Tools page where you will find links to the following:

• NAEP Data Explorer, a web-based tool that allows users to generate tables of results from all of the assessments administered by the NAEP program since 1990;
• Frameworks, the blueprints on which the content of the assessment is based;
• State Profiles, a tool to help you explore the performance of students in your state;
• NAEP Questions Tool, which contains more than 1,800 actual questions, answers, scoring guides, and question-level data from the NAEP assessments; and
• Assessment Procedures pages for science discuss the sampling, data collection, data analysis, and reporting procedures used by the NAEP program.  

Additional information of particular interest to researchers is available in the Research e-Center on the NAEP website.