Describing Performance Standards: Validity of the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress Achievement Level Descriptors as Characterizations of Mathematics Performance

Abstract

For its first 2 decades, the National Asessement of Educational Progress (NAEP) provided only descriptive information on the academic of American youth. The 1988 reauthorization of NAEP, however, established the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) and gave it responsibility for establishing appropriate goals for each age and grade level in each subject area. The response of the NAGB, which has been a model for standards-based reporting in some state assessments, was to establish 3 achievement levels with a set of verbal descriptions and exemplar items. Reported in this article is a series of studies undertaken to evaluate the validity of the descriptions and exemplars as characterizations of the actual mathematics performance of students at the levels. Found in the study, were serious inconsistencies between actual performance and both the descriptions and exemplars provided by the NAGB. This article offers a number of recommendations in response, some of which apply to standards-bas...