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What Does the NAEP Science Assessment Measure?

NAEP measures the science knowledge and skills of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students. According to the NAEP Science Framework, developed by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), students are to be assessed in science in the following areas:

• knowledge of facts;
• an ability to integrate this knowledge into larger constructs; and
• the capacity to use the tools, procedures, and reasoning processes of science to develop an increased understanding of the natural world.

Based on this framework, the science assessment measures and reports subscales for three major fields of science, as follows:

• Earth;
• physical; and
• life.

The assessment also measures three characteristic elements of knowing and doing science, as follows:

• conceptual understanding;
• scientific investigation; and
• practical reasoning.

Each exercise in the science assessment measures one of the elements of knowing and doing science within one of the fields of science (for example, scientific investigation in the context of physical science).

The science framework specifies the amount of assessment time to be devoted to each of the three components for grades 4, 8, and 12.

For more detailed information about the objectives of the science assessment, explore the NAEP Science Framework (available in HTML or 386K PDF file: requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).

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Last updated 19 April 2004 (CC)