What Does the NAEP Civics Assessment Measure?NAEP measures the civics knowledge and skills of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students. According to the civics framework developed by the National Assessment Governing Board, the assessment should be organized in three main components: civic knowledge, intellectual skills, and civic dispositions. Civic KnowledgeThe civic knowledge component draws heavily on the National Standards for Civics and Government developed by the Center for Civic Education and covers the broad range of content that forms the basis of civic understanding. It is organized into five main categories, expressed as questions.
Intellectual SkillsThe intellectual skills component covers those skills of mind and action that allow individuals to apply civic knowledge to good effect. The framework distinguishes three skills, though they are clearly overlapping.
Civic DispositionsThe component of civic dispositions, according to the framework, "refers to the traits of private and public character essential to the preservation and improvement of American constitutional democracy." The framework defines five dispositions as follows:
Look at the distribution of questions in the civics assessment. Sample Question booklets for the 2006 civics assessment are available for download. For more in-depth information about the objectives of the civics assessment, explore the NAEP civics framework (575K PDF).
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