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The NAEP long-term trend assessment in science that was first administered around the beginning of the 1970s is different from more recently developed assessments in the same subject area, referred to as NAEP's main assessments. The existence of the two national assessment programs--long-term trend and main--makes it possible for NAEP to meet two important objectives: measuring educational progress over time, and developing new assessment instruments that can periodically reflect current educational content and assessment methodology. The long-term trend assessment has remained substantially the same since its first administration, and thus makes it possible to meet the first objective of measuring progress over time. Because the long-term trend assessment uses different instruments from those used in the main assessments, and because students are sampled by age for the long-term trend assessment rather than by grade as in the main assessments, it is not possible to compare results from the two assessment programs.
The long-term trend assessment in science contains a content dimension and a cognitive dimension. The content dimension assesses students' ability to conduct inquiries, solve problems, and know science. The assessment also measures students' understanding of the nature of science within the context of both the content and cognitive dimensions. The long-term trend assessment uses only multiple-choice questions to assess what students know and can do in science.
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