The NAEP Arts ScaleStudents' abilities to analyze, interpret, and describe works of art in music, theatre, and visual arts were measured with multiple-choice questions and questions to which students wrote responses. Because such questions require students to respond to works of art, they are called "responding" items. Student performance on responding items were summarized with one scale for music, one for theatre, and one for visual arts. Each scale ranged from 0-300. Each arts subject was scaled separately because they were assessed separately and require different knowledge and skills. Item response theory (IRT) methods were used to produce each subject area scale. IRT is a set of statistical procedures useful in summarizing student performance across a collection of test exercises requiring similar knowledge and skills. See Appendix A in the NAEP 1997 Arts Report Card for more information about IRT scaling. To give meaning to the levels of the responding scale, it is useful to create an "item map." An item map is a visual representation that compares questions with scale scores and indicates which kinds of questions students can likely answer correctly at each level on the scale. Check out the theatre responding item map to learn about different levels of student performance on the theatre responding scale. Students' abilities to create and perform works of art in music, theatre, and visual arts were measured with tasks that required students to sing, play music, act in theatrical improvisations, and create works of visual art. Their performance on these "creating" and "performing" exercises was summarized with an average percent of the maximum possible score on all creating and performing exercises. Student performance on creating and performing items in music, theatre, and visual arts were summarized on three separate percentage scales, one for each arts subject, ranging from 0-100 percent. Learn why creating and performing exercises were summarized with average percentages and not with IRT scales. NAEP used the three arts IRT scales and average percentage score scales for music, theatre, and visual arts to report how well students in different demographic groups, like race, gender, and region, performed on the arts assessment. (NAEP does NOT report individual student scores.) For example, this music table compares the performance of male and female students on the music responding and creating/performing exercises.
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