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# 1994 NAEP Assessment in Reading

Vol. 1, No. 1, January 1994

(NCES 94-057) Ordering Information

In early 1994, many students across the nation will participate in theNational Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading. To help teachers,policy analysts, and others understand the assessment, this edition of *Focuson NAEP* presents the objectives and examples of how students in grades 4, 8,and 12 will be assessed. The framework that guides the assessment was developedin 1989-90 through a national consensus process involving experts in reading,teachers, business representatives, policymakers, and others who broughtnational, state, and classroom perspectives to the discussion.

## NAEP's View of Reading

Contemporary research indicates that reading is a complex activity involvingan interaction among the reader, the text, and the context in which something isread. It is an active process of building understanding rather than a passiveprocess of simply recognizing words and ideas.

In line with this orientation, the 1994 NAEP reading assessment framework,unchanged since 1992, emphasizes performance measures that require students tomove beyond mere surface understanding and demonstrate the ability to examinethe passage's meaning and extend it through personal knowledge and experiences.

## Key Features of the Assessment

      -  Assessment of students' ability to read for three general purposes:reading for literary experience, reading to gain information, and reading toperform a task;
      -  Selection of longer and authentic reading materials (such as shortstories, poems, articles, and essays), reproduced as they appeared in theiroriginal publications, to assess reading as it is actually used in and outsidethe classroom;
      -  Selection of texts reflecting the tremendous cultural and topicaldiversity in reading materials;
      -  Open-ended (or constructed-response) items that allow students todemonstrate their ability to provide complex responses to what they read; and
      -  An opportunity for students in grades 8 and 12 to select one of sevenshort stories from  The NAEP Reader  and to respond to open-endedquestions about it.

## Dimensions of the Assessment

The 1994 NAEP reading assessment framework defines two dimensions for theassessment-reading purposes and reading stances. These are summarized in table1.
```
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Table 1.-The 1994 NAEP assessment in reading: Aspects of reading literacy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Constructing, extending, and examining meaning

             Initial                Developing an      Personal               Demonstrating a
             understanding          interpretation     reflection and         critical stance
                                                       response

Reading      Requires the reader    Requires the       Requires the reader    Requires the reader
purpose      to provide an initial  reader to go       to connect             to stand apart from
             impression or          beyond the         knowledge from the     the text and consider it.
             unreflected            initial            text with his or her 
             understanding of       impression to      own personal
             what was read.         develop a more     background
                                    complete           knowledge. The
                                    understanding of   focus here is on how
                                    what was read.     the text relates to
                                                       personal knowledge.

Reading for  What is the story      How did this       Is this story similar  How does this literary
literary     about?                 character change   to or different from   author's use of
experience                          from the           your own               ____(irony,
                                    beginning to the   experiences:           personification,
                                    end of the story?                         humor) contribute
                                                                              to______?

Reading for  What does this         In what ways       Does this              What could be information
information  article tell you       are these ideas    description fit what   added to improve
             about____?             important to the   you know               the author's
                                    topic or theme?    about _____? Why?      argument?

Reading to   What is this           What must you      Describe a situation   Why is this
perform      supposed to help       do before this     where you could        information needed?
a task       you do?                step?              leave out step X.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment
Governing Board, Reading Framework for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 1994.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
```

## Reading Purposes

The NAEP reading assessment framework recognizes that readers think and usetext differently, depending on the types of text and the purpose for reading.For example, a reader skims a phone book or airline schedule for specificinformation but may stop and reread phrases of a novel to consider their meaningand how they reflect the author's style.

* *Reading for literary experience involves*

-Reading novels, short stories, poems, plays, and essays;

-Exploring the human condition and the interplay among events, characters,emotions, and possibilities;

-Knowing what and how an author might write in a specific genre and usewriting techniques such as figures of speech;

-Looking for how the author explores or uncovers experiences; and

-Engaging in vicarious experiences through the text.

* *Reading for information involves*

-Reading articles in magazines and newspapers, chapters in textbooks,entries in encyclopedias and catalogs, books on particular topics, and the like;

-Being aware of the features found in informative text, such as charts,footnotes, diagrams subheadings, and tables; and

-Acquiring information for different purposes, such as specific informationwhen preparing a research project or general information when glancing through amagazine article.

* *Reading to perform a task involves*

-Reading practical documents such as bus or train schedules; directions forgames, repairs, classroom, and laboratory procedures; tax or insurance forms;recipes; voter registration materials; maps; referenda; consumer warranties;office memoranda; and the like;

-Recognizing the purposes and structures of practical documents to guideselection, understanding, and application of information;

-Looking for information to do something, rather than savoring the style orthought in texts as in reading for literary experience; and

-Applying, not simply understanding, the information.

## Reading Stances

The NAEP reading assessment exercises are designed to tap four essentialresponses readers need to be able to make to what they read: initialunderstanding, developing an interpretation, personal reflection and response,and demonstrating a critical stance. These stances or orientations have beenobserved in discussion and uses of reading materials. They are not a hierarchyof skills-every reader, regardless of age or level of achievement, should beable to use them. What changes with readers' growing proficiency is thecomplexity and thoroughness of their responses and the difficulty of theirreading materials.

* *Initial understanding* requires the reader to

-Provide an initial impression or global understanding that does not requiremuch analysis of what was read;

-Consider the text as a whole or in general rather than specific parts; and

-Respond to questions such as: Write a paragraph telling what the story orpoem is about. Which of the following is the best statement of the theme of thisstory? Write a paragraph telling what this article generally tells you. What isthis supposed to help you do? What would you tell someone about the maincharacter?

* *Developing an interpretation* requires the reader to

-Extend initial impressions to develop a more complete understanding of whatwas read;

-Link information across parts of a text as well as focusing on specificinformation; and

-Respond to questions such as: How did this event affect the course of theplot? What caused the character to do this (use examples from the story tosupport your answer)? What caused this event? What type of person is thischaracter (use information from the text to support your answer)? In what waysare these ideas important to the topic or theme? What will be the result of thisstep in the directions? What does this character think about____?

* *Personal reflection and response* require the reader to

-Connect meaning from the text with the reader's own background knowledgeand experiences; and

-Respond to questions such as: How did this character change your ideasof____ ? How is this story like or different from your own experience? Explain.What current event does this remind you of? Explain. Does this description fitwhat you know about____ ? Why? What would you do about the problem discussed inthe article? What information from other books or your own knowledge helped youanswer this?

* *Demonstrating a critical stance* requires the reader to

-Stand apart from the text and consider it objectively as written text;

-Critically evaluate text, compare and contrast types of writing style orgenres, and understand the impact of such features as irony, humor, andorganization; and

-Respond to questions such as: Compare the style or tone of this article orstory to that one. Does the author use (irony, personification, humor)effectively? Explain. What could be added to improve the author's argument? Why?Is this information needed? What other information would you need to find out?

In addition, the assessment contains questions requiring readers to makeconnections across parts of a text or between texts. For example, students mightbe asked to compare a poem and a story with the same theme or to relateinformation from a first-person account to a textbook description of an event.

## Question Types and Allocation of Testing Time

The 1994 NAEP reading assessment includes a mixture of multiple-choice,short-constructed-response, and extended-constructed-response items to tap arange of reacting responses. *Short-constructed-response items or tasks*require a limited range of inferences and connections usually in a phrase or afew sentences. *Extended-constructed-response items or tasks,* on theother hand, require multiple inferences or connections in a short or longparagraph and are scored according to specific criteria. Thus, the range ofpossible answers is greater in extended-constructed responses. The type ofquestion is determined by its content. Students participating in the NAEPreading assessment take different subsets (or blocks) of test items, and noindividual student takes the entire test. Across all blocks, question types aredistributed as shown in table 2.
```
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 2.-Distribution of items and percentage of assessment time by
         question type and grade
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Question Type
                Multiple            Short                 Extended
                choice            constructed            constructed
Grade                               response               response 
        Number of  Percentage  Number of  Percentage  Number of  Percentage
        items      of time     items      of time     items      of time
  4      39            37       37            38       8             25
  8      41            21       65            45       16            33
  12     44            22       72            47       16            31
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education
Statistics, National Assessment Governing Board, unpublished data, 1994.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
```

## References

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,National Assessment Governing Board. *Reading Framework for the Assessment ofEducational Progress.* Washington, DC: 1994.

## Note

*Focus on NAEP* is a new series that briefly summarizes informationabout the ongoing development and implementation of the National Assessment ofEducational Progress. The project director for *Focus on NAEP* is SheidaWhite. This issue was prepared by Sheida White, National Center for EducationStatistics (NCES) and Barbara Kapinus, The Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers.

For questions, and for more information about NAEP and to order NAEP products see the NAEP staff directory

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