NAEP Report Card: Science

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a congressionally mandated project administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the U.S. Department of Education and is the largest continuing and nationally representative assessment of what our nation's students know and can do in select subjects. NCES first administered NAEP in 1969 to measure student achievement nationally. The NAEP science assessment measures students’ knowledge of three broad content areas—Physical Science, Life Science, and Earth and Space Sciences—and four science practices—Identifying Science Principles, Using Science Principles, Using Scientific Inquiry, and Using Technological Design. These four practices describe how students use their science knowledge by measuring what they are able to do with the science content. Results for grades 4, 8, and 12 are reported for the nation.

In 2019, the NAEP science assessments at grades 4, 8, and 12 transitioned from being paper-based assessments (PBA) to digitally based assessments (DBA). A multi-step process was used for the transition from PBA to DBA, which involved administering the assessments in both formats. Students were randomly assigned to take either the digitally based or paper-based assessment in 2019. The assessment results in this report are based on the combined performance of students who took the paper-based and digitally based assessments. The transition was designed and implemented with careful intent to preserve trend lines that show student performance over time. Thus, the results from the 2019 science assessments can be compared to results from previous years. Read more about the NAEP Digitally Based Science Assessment.