Archived -- OERI Bulletin - Summer 1997 - National Voluntary Test Development

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

OERI BULLETIN - Summer 1997

National Voluntary Tests Development Under Way

President Clinton, in his State of the Union address on February 4, challenged every state to adopt high national standards and to test every fourth-grader in reading and every eighth-grader in math to make sure these standards are met. The U.S. Department of Education is coordinating the effort to develop voluntary national standards in these two areas.

Reading and math skills provide the foundation for future learning. Research shows that students who fail to read English well by fourth grade are more likely to drop out of school and have a diminished chance of success in school and in life. Students who master the basics of algebra and some geometry by completion of grade eight, have the foundation to take tough math and science courses in high school to prepare for college and high skills jobs.

Every parent has the right to know how well his or her child is doing compared with students in other schools, states, and countries. National voluntary tests in math and reading will help states and local communities raise standards of excellence for teaching and learning in every classroom, and provide parents with accurate information about their children's and their children's schools academic performance. The Department will give every state and school district the opportunity to use the voluntary national tests of fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math, beginning in 1999. These rigorous tests will provide scores for individual students, measured against widely accepted standards of excellence--national and international standards--that show if students have mastered critical basic skills. This will be the first time rigorous tests of reading and math skills at these grade levels, tied to national standards, are available to measure individual student performance throughout the nation.

Content of Tests

The tests will be based on challenging content standards already established through a national consensus processes. The content--or test items--for both the reading and math tests will be based on the content frameworks developed for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The content frameworks are developed through an extensive consensus building process in which a broadly representative panel of teachers, education specialists, and members of the public come to agree on what is important for all students to know and be able to do in various subjects. In much the same way, an international consensus on what students should know in mathematics was reached among the 41 countries participating in TIMSS, the Third International Math and Science Study.

Students who take the national test in eighth-grade mathematics will be able to see how their performance compares to their international peers through TIMSS.

The Council of Chief State School Officers will help develop the specifications for these national tests.

Availability and Use

The new tests will be made available to states and districts to assess students in the spring of every year, beginning in 1999. The decision to use, or not use, these tests will be made by state and local authorities. They are entirely voluntary, and no federal funding will be lost if the decision not to participate is made. The federal government will collect no individual records or data from these tests. Once tests are administered, they will be placed on the Internet and widely distributed to interested communities along with scoring and reporting guides.

Test Administration

The federal government will not administer the tests. States and local school districts will contract with private companies to administer, print, distribute, score, and report individual test results. The Department intends to cover the cost of administration during the first year.

Links to NAEP & TIMSS

With each year's administration of NAEP and TIMSS, linking studies will be conducted to relate the scores on these national tests to the NAEP and TIMSS scales.

NAEP and TIMSS vs New Voluntary Math & Reading Tests

Although the new tests will be based on the NAEP framework and, in the case of math, linked to TIMSS, unlike NAEP and TIMMS the new tests will be designed to produce student-level scores. NAEP and TIMSS do not produce student-level scores because they test a random sample of students in order to produce estimates of overall state and national level student achievements. some of the differences between the two tests are as follows.

NAEP and TIMSS

Only a random sample of students is tested
No student takes all of the items on the test
Include multiple choice and performance items
45-60 minutes of achievement item testing per student
Yields a TIMSS or NAEP score for counties and states

New Reading and Math Tests

All students in participating communities are tested
All students take all of the items on the test
Is about 80% multiple choice, with 20% constructed response (students product their own answers), including one extended constructed response item. About 50% of test time will be devoted to constructed response.
Up to 90 minutes of achievement item testing
Yields a student test score plus a predicted student TIMSS and NAEP score.

More Information

For more information about the tests, contact the National Voluntary Testing Project at 202-219-2050; or visit the Department's web site at http://www.ed.gov/nationaltests. The site contains complete, up-to-date information about the tests, including progress reports on test development and transcripts of public meetings held with educators and school administrators, parents, and students.

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[Assistant Secretary's Column]