Table of Contents | Search Technical Documentation | References
When there are several content-related subscales defined for a subject area1, the subscales are combined into a composite scale used to describe the overall attainment of students in that subject area. The weight of each subscale in the composite reflects the relative importance of the scale as specified in the framework developed by the National Assessment Governing Board. The weights are approximately proportional to the number of items in each scale at a given grade level.
| Content dimension | Multiplier for each content-dimension scale | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 12 | |||
| Market economics | .45 | ||
| National economics | .40 | ||
| International economics | .15 | ||
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2006 Economics Assessment. | |||
| Content dimension | Multiplier for each content-dimension scale | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 4 | Grade 8 | Grade 12 | |
| Space and place | .40 | .40 | .40 |
| Environment and society | .30 | .30 | .30 |
| Spatial dynamics and connections | .30 | .30 | .30 |
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2001 Geography Assessment. | |||
| Content strand | Multiplier for each content-dimension scale | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 4 | Grade 8 | Grade 12 | |
| Number sense, properties, and operations | .40 | .25 | .20 |
| Measurement | .20 | .15 | .15 |
| Geometry and spatial sense | .15 | .20 | .20 |
| Data analysis, statistics, and probability | .10 | .15 | .20 |
| Algebra and functions | .15 | .25 | .25 |
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2000 Mathematics Assessment. | |||
| Purpose for reading | Multiplier for each content-dimension scale | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 4 | Grade 8 | Grade 12 | |
| Reading for literary experience | .55 | .40 | .35 |
| Reading for information | .45 | .40 | .45 |
| Reading to perform a task | † | .20 | .20 |
| † Not applicable; according to the NAEP reading framework, the Reading to Perform a Task scale is never assessed at grade 4 in NAEP. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2000 Reading Assessment. |
|||
| Field of science | Multiplier for each content-dimension scale | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 4 | Grade 8 | Grade 12 | |
| Earth science | .33 | .30 | .33 |
| Physical science | .33 | .30 | .33 |
| Life science | .33 | .40 | .33 |
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2000 Science Assessment. | |||
| U.S. history themes | Multiplier for each content-dimension scale | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 4 | Grade 8 | Grade 12 | |
| Change and continuity in American democracy | .25 | .30 | .25 |
| The gathering of interactions of peoples, cultures, and ideas | .35 | .30 | .25 |
| Economic and technological changes | .25 | .20 | .25 |
| The changing role of America in the world | .15 | .20 | .25 |
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2001 U.S. History Assessment. | |||
1 The NAEP civics assessment, writing assessment, and all long-term trend assessments use a single scale at each grade level.
