More About NAEP Reading

The NAEP reading assessment results present a broad view of how well America's students are reading—one of the most important skills that young people can acquire and develop throughout their lives. The assessment was developed and reviewed by a committee of reading and measurement experts to capture the goals of the reading framework. The National Assessment Governing Board, through a comprehensive national process involving reading teachers, researchers, measurement experts, policymakers, and members of the general public, created the framework, which describes the goals of the assessment and what kinds of exercises it should feature. The Reading Development Committee was instrumental in the development of the assessment.

The framework describes the types of texts and questions to be included in the assessment, as well as how the questions should be designed and scored. The framework specifies the use of

• literary texts, which include fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry; and 
• informational texts, which vary by grade level and include exposition, argumentation and persuasive texts, and procedural texts and documents.

In addition, all reading questions are aligned to cognitive targets, the kinds of thinking that underlie reading comprehension. The framework specifies that the assessment questions measure three cognitive targets for both literary and information texts. The targets and their descriptions are listed below.

• Locate and Recall. When locating or recalling information from what they have read, students may identify explicitly stated main ideas or may focus on specific elements of a story.
• Integrate and Interpret. When integrating and interpreting what they have read, students may make comparisons, explain character motivation, or examine relations of ideas across the text. 
• Critique and Evaluate: When critiquing or evaluating what they have read, students view the text critically by examining it from numerous perspectives or may evaluate overall text quality or the effectiveness of particular aspects of the text.

The framework also calls for a systematic assessment of vocabulary.

The assessment consisted of both multiple-choice and constructed-response questions. Multiple-choice questions were designed to test students’ understanding of the individual texts, as well as their ability to integrate and synthesize ideas across the texts. Constructed-response questions were based on consideration of the texts the students read. Each student read approximately two passages and responded to questions about what he or she read.

Look at a more detailed distribution of questions in the assessment.

NAEP also gives questionnaires to teachers, students, and schools that are part of the NAEP sample. Responses to these questionnaires provide information about school policies affecting reading instruction, as well as information about schools' resources.

Learn more about NAEP, the nation's only ongoing assessment of what students know and can do in various subject areas.

View the 2011 Reading Report Card.

View the 2011 Trial Urban District Assessment Reading Report Card.