Supporting the Nation's Report Card
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—administered by the National Center for Education Statistics—is the most comprehensive and trusted measure of student achievement in the United States. For more than two decades, AIR has been a key partner in ensuring NAEP provides policymakers, educators, and the public with reliable, comparable data on student performance across states and over time.
We have supported every phase of NAEP—assessment operations and development, data collection and psychometric analysis, research and reporting, and user support and outreach. Our teams help transform complex data into actionable insights that support informed policy decisions.
AIR's Contributions to NAEP
- Ensuring content validity and smooth operations. AIR’s assessment operations and development team provides technical and subject-area expertise throughout the development of assessment content, platforms, designs, and processes to ensure NAEP assessments are valid, reliable, and construct relevant.
- Streamlining technical reviews. AIR’s technical review team uses automated quality-control tools and establishes efficient workflows to conduct rigorous quality assurance of NAEP data and publications. Our approach accelerates delivery, minimizes human error, and ensures that researchers and policymakers receive accurate, reliable NAEP resources.
- Leading research and development. AIR’s NAEP research portfolio includes rigorous studies and technical evaluations that inform assessment design, implementation, and reporting. These efforts advance the validity, reliability, and policy relevance of NAEP, ensuring it remains the gold standard in large-scale educational assessment. Our Research & Development Program also provides technical assistance and training opportunities to expand the community of NAEP researchers.
- Developing user-focused reporting products. AIR helps to create a range of reporting products to meet various user needs.
- We developed Focus on NAEP to help educators, policymakers, and the public explore and understand NAEP data and processes.
- We have produced more than 200 NAEP-related studies and briefs, which have been cited widely by education agencies, policy makers, and researchers.
- We support the mapping of state proficiency standards onto the NAEP scale to enable consistent comparisons across states.
- Overseeing technical advisory panels. AIR convenes the NAEP Validity Panel, which evaluates design, implementation, and reporting practices to ensure NAEP remains methodologically sound and policy relevant. AIR also led the NAEP Validity Studies Panel from 1995 to 2025.
- Innovating process data. AIR’s Center for Process Data investigates student interactions with digital assessments to inform smarter test design and expand access to process data for researchers.
- Leading assessment studies. AIR led the 2018 Oral Reading Fluency Study, which provided foundational data on the relationship between oral reading performance and reading comprehension and established a profile of oral reading and foundational skill characteristics for the lowest-performing 4th-grade students.
- Building efficient and accessible data tools. AIR makes it easier for users to navigate and use NAEP data.
- AIR created EdSurvey, an open-source R package that simplifies analysis of NAEP data and supports reproducible findings.
- AIR developed an AI assistant chatbot that makes NAEP data easier to find and interpret.
- Supporting data users and coordinators. AIR provides training and guidance to ensure data users understand NAEP data and can use it effectively.
- We managed the NAEP Research & Development Program, which trained emerging scholars to access, analyze, and apply NAEP data.
- We provide support to State and TUDA Coordinators on NAEP frameworks, specifications, and item development activities to ensure they understand and are prepared for NAEP administrations and releases.
