Brief Reports: An Examination of Relationships between the 1990 NAEP Mathematics Items for Grade 8 and Selected Themes from the NCTM Standards

For about 20 years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has reported on the status and progress of U.S. educational achievement in a variety of subject areas, including mathematics (Mullis, 1990). The 1990 NAEP mathematics assessment, which was the fifth in this subject area, was different from the previous four assessments in some important ways. For example, the 1990 NAEP assessment was the first NAEP for which it was possible to report state-level results for those states willing to participate. In fact. the 1990 NAEP consisted of two tests: one given to a national sample at grades 4, 8, and 12 as in prior assessments, and the other given only at grade 8 to a different sample drawn specifically for the stateby-state reporting of results.