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National Assessment Governing Board Calls on Congress to Move The Nation’s Report Card to 2027

For immediate release
Contact: Stephaan Harris, (202) 357-7504
Stephaan.Harris@ed.gov

National Assessment Governing Board Calls on Congress to Move The Nation’s Report Card to 2027
Builds on changes and improvements to the assessment coming in 2024

May 19, 2023 (Los Angeles, CA) — The National Assessment Governing Board today voted unanimously to approve a resolution requesting that Congress postpone the 2026 Nation’s Report Card in reading and mathematics to 2027, restoring the assessment administration schedule to off-cycle from federal elections.

“The pandemic upended so much in our lives, including the longstanding practice of releasing the Nation’s Report Card results ‘off-cycle’ from federal elections. Today’s resolution continues NAEP’s position as a trusted, independent, and nonpartisan measure of student progress nationwide,” said Beverly Perdue, National Assessment Governing Board chair and former North Carolina governor.

This proposed change builds on modernization plans for the administration of the Nation's Report Card (also called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP), in the 2023-2024 school year. These changes require 2024 reading and mathematics results for fourth- and eighth-grade students to be released in winter 2025, rather than in fall 2024. Math and reading results for 12th-grade students and science results for eighth-grade students will be released approximately six months later. States and districts that participated in NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessments were informed of these changes in April by The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers NAEP. 

In 2024, the assessment program will transition to using NAEP-provided Chromebooks to allow students to use devices more commonly used in schools today. NCES will study the comparability of tests taken on newly provided Chromebooks and the previously used devices, thus requiring the delay in releasing results. The transition is a step toward developing device-agnostic NAEP assessments.

“The Governing Board looks forward to re-establishing the nearly two-decade norm of releasing the Nation’s Report Card off-cycle from federal elections, allowing all of us to understand how America’s students are doing,” said Lesley Muldoon, National Assessment Governing Board executive director.

Key Background Information

  • The Governing Board sets policy, including what subjects and grades to test, and determines achievement levels for the Nation’s Report Card, the only nationally representative assessment of student achievement in the U.S.
  • NCES, within the Institute of Education Sciences, administers NAEP. The commissioner of the NCES is responsible by law for carrying out the NAEP project.
  • The NAEP Authorization Act requires that NAEP be administered in public and private schools in reading and mathematics every two years in fourth and eighth grades. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) mandates that states participate in the biennial reading and mathematics NAEP assessments in fourth and eighth grades.

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, visit www.nagb.gov.