The 1999 NAEP Long-Term Trend Science Assessment
The NAEP long-term trend assessment in science was first administered in 1969 and reported in 1970. It differed from more recently developed main NAEP assessments administered in 1996, 2000, and 2005. The existence of the two national assessment programs—long-term trend and main—makes it possible for NAEP to meet two important objectives: measuring educational progress over time, and developing new assessment instruments that can periodically reflect current educational content and assessment methodology. The long-term trend assessment has remained substantially the same since its first administration, making it possible to meet the first objective of measuring progress over time. Because the long-term trend assessment uses different instruments from those used in the main assessments, and because students are sampled by age for the long-term trend assessment rather than by grade as in the main assessments, it is not possible to compare results from the two assessment programs. The long-term trend assessment in science contains a content dimension and a cognitive dimension. The content dimension assesses students' ability to conduct inquiries, solve problems, and know science. The cognitive dimension assesses students' understanding of the nature of science within the context of both the content and cognitive dimensions. The long-term trend assessment uses only multiple-choice questions to assess what students know and can do in science. In order to maintain the long-term trend in science, the National Assessment Governing Board determined in 2002 that technical studies were required to enable necessary changes to the design of the assessment and revisions to the item pool. For these reasons, science was not assessed in the 2003-2004 school year. For more information, see the Governing Board policy (54K PDF). Explore the 2004 long-term trend assessments in reading and mathematics.
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