ABSTRACT
National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) policy indicates that results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should be reported according to the percentage of students estimated to be above 3 levels of standards called achievement levels. The standards, labeled Basic, Proficient, and Advanced, are operationalized by 3 points on the NAEP scale. In this article, I provide an overview of the process that was used to identify provisional locations for the points that would inform NAGB as they set the achievement levels for the science NAEP. The process includes the identification of panelists to be involved in the achievement-level setting, the training for the panelists, and the method for converting panelists ratings of NAEP items to points on the NAEP score scale.
