For Release: December 3, 2021

CONTACT: Stephaan Harris, (202) 357-7504, Stephaan.Harris@ed.gov

Governing Board Cancels 2024 NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy, Adds Long-Term Trend for 13-Year-Olds in 2022

Technical limitations push TEL administration to 2028, LTT to spotlight COVID-19 impacts 

WASHINGTON — The National Assessment Governing Board voted to remove the 2024 Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) assessment from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) schedule due to several technical issues that prevented the reporting of full results and trends. Instead, the Board added a fall 2022 administration of the Long-Term Trend (LTT) assessments for 13-year-olds to provide the public with invaluable information on student achievement before and after school closures due to the pandemic.

TEL is next slated for administration in 2028 to eighth-graders and will produce national and state-level results. The significant changes needed to modernize the TEL administration for 2024 would prevent the NAEP program from producing an overall composite score, NAEP achievement levels, and reporting on subscales and overall trends. Given these limits, the Governing Board decided that the funds set aside for the 2024 TEL assessment would be better invested in the LTT assessments of 13-year-olds, providing vital information on how student learning changed before and after COVID-related disruptions to instruction.

“The Board very much believes in the skills TEL assesses and it remains an important area. But we also want to make sure every NAEP assessment can report full, actionable data,” said former North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue, chair of the National Assessment Governing Board.

“Additional Long-Term Trend assessments will allow NAEP to shine a national spotlight on how students’ educational outcomes changed during the pandemic,” said Perdue. “Good policy must be data-informed, and NAEP can play a critical role in helping policymakers at every level take action to improve education.”

The LTT assessments measure student performance in reading and mathematics, serving as the nation’s only continuous source of data on student achievement for more than a half century. The assessments differ from the main NAEP assessments by focusing on fundamental mathematics and reading skills and reporting national-only results by age rather than grade level.

The additional LTT administration will occur after the early 2022 administration of main NAEP, which will produce results by nation, state, and 27 urban districts in reading and mathematics for grades 4 and 8, and the administration of LTT assessments of 9-year-olds in spring 2022. Together, these assessments will contribute to the nation’s understanding of how COVID-19 has impacted student learning and achievement.

The Governing Board sets policy for NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, and its obligations include setting the NAEP schedule. NAEP is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System and the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the United States and other nations.

Download the PDF version of the release here.

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The National Assessment Governing Board is an independent, nonpartisan board whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. Congress created the 26-member Governing Board in 1988 to set policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. For more information about the Governing Board, visit www.nagb.gov.