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How the Samples of Schools
and Students Are Selected for the Main Assessments (State
and National)
Beginning with the 2002 NAEP
assessments, a combined sample of public schools was
selected for both state and national NAEP. This was done in
response to the NAEP redesign of 1998. It was thought that
drawing a subset of schools from all of the state samples to
produce national estimates would reduce the burden by
decreasing the total number of schools participating in
state and national NAEP. From this group of schools,
representing 50 states, a sub-sample was identified as the
national subset. (Please note that the
long-term trend assessments,
scheduled for
every four years, use a nationally representative sample and
do not report results by state.)
In the state assessment, a
sample of schools and students is selected to represent a
participating state. In an average state, 2,500 students in
approximately 100 public schools are selected per grade, per
subject assessed. The selection of schools is random, within
classes of schools with similar characteristics. But some
schools or groups of schools (districts) can be selected for
each assessment cycle if they are unique in the state. For
instance, a particular district may be in the only major
metropolitan area of a state or have the majority of a
minority population in the state.
Typically, 30 students per
subject per grade are selected randomly in each school. Some
of the students who are randomly selected are classified as
students with disabilities (SD) or as English language
learners (ELL). NAEP's goal is to assess all students in the
sample, and this is done if at all possible. For more
information, read about
NAEP's inclusion policy for a description of
accommodation issues.
To find out more about NAEP
sampling methods, see
details about sampling for the reading assessments, or
see some of the most
frequently asked questions about the state sample design.
National probability samples1
of schools and students are selected to represent the
diverse student population in the United States. The numbers
of schools and students vary from cycle to cycle, depending
on the number of subjects and items assessed. A national
sample has sufficient schools and students to yield data for
public and nonpublic schools and for the four NAEP regions
of the country, as well as sex, race, degree of urbanization
of school location, parent education, and participation in
the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
A national sample of
nonpublic (private) schools is also selected for grades 4,
8, and 12. This sample is designed to produce national and
regional estimates of student performance.
1 A
sample in which every element of the population has a known,
non-zero probability of being selected.
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