NAEP is fresh off its big release of statewide data that occurred in October of 2022. NAEP headlines were everywhere as the country saw the true impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our nation's educational system, and lower outcomes in Math and Reading throughout the nation were reported. As always, the public is free to explore NAEP data and look at how our state did via the NAEP data explorer. Explore Assessment Data | NAEP (ed.gov)
NAEP will soon be releasing another study that Arizona participated in, the Long-Term Trend Age 13. This was a nationwide sample and will be a direct comparison of schools that completed Long-Term Trend Age 13 in October of 2019 (just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic). NAEP repeated the same sample of schools that completed the Long-Term Trend Age 13 assessment in October of 2019. We were in the field again sampling those same schools in October of 2022. The National Assessment Governing Board will soon be announcing when the data will be released. It is sure to make national headlines and gain interest in the media. Long-Term Trend Age 13 is one of the longest trendline tests in NAEP's assessment bank. While the Long-Term Trend data is valuable to the nation, there will be no state level results.
The 2023-2024 school year will involve a "Big NAEP" year for the country and Arizona. There will be a grade 4 and grade 8 Mathematics and Reading assessment. A grade 8 Science assessment will be part of NAEP 2024. Grade 12 will have a Math, Reading, and Transcript study. The High School Transcript study will collect the transcripts of students who took the NAEP assessment, and their course taking and performance on the NAEP scales will be studied. The amount of work and data that is used in this study is staggering, and the High School Transcript study data from 2019 can be seen here: 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study (ed.gov).
Grade 12 data is particularly challenging to collect. The Arizona Department of Education (ADE) is preparing to work with our high schools in the sample to increase participation rates. ADE will provide guidance to administrators and deliver the message of high participation as part of grade 12 students' legacy. The data collected will help stakeholders make informed data-driven decisions. It truly provides us with what our seniors know and can do at the completion of their High School Experience. Let's give these students the opportunity to give back to education and leave our system better than they found it.
