Describing NAEP Achievement Levels with Multiple Domain Scores

This study was conducted to demonstrate the potential for using multiple domains to describe achievement levels in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics test. Mathematics items from the NAEP grade 8 assessment for the year 2000 were used. Curriculum experts provided ratings of when the skills required to answer the items correctly were introduced and when they were mastered in a standard mathematics curriculum. The ratings were used to define two or three domains within each content strand in the test framework (number sense, measurement, geometry, data analysis, and algebra). Characteristic curves based on these domains tended to be well spaced and noncrossing as a function of the NAEP mathematics scale score. Results support Guttman-style interpretations of what students at a given level of achievement can or cannot be expected to do in terms of scoring higher or lower than a percentage correct criterion score that may be chosen to define mastery of a domain. On the basis of thes