User:Nicolesarahwolff

History of NAEP:

In order to understand the history of NAEP, it is important to understand the history of education in the country and the need for testing. At first, the trend in the country was for children and slaves to be educated at home, but slowly it became increasingly more appeal for families to send their children to a school to be educated. After the American Revolution, there was an even greater emphasis on education as people felt that the youth of America needed to be educated on the new republic. Even though education was highly valued, there were large disparities in the education that people were receiving across the country and across smaller areas. As schooling continued to spread unevenly throughout the United States, people felt a need to establish some sort of state education system that would force opponents to education to have their children educated by the state. Because people at this time were afraid of having one centralized government that controlled most aspects of life in the country, superintendents of schools were given very little power. In order to learn about the quality of education that students were receiving in their district, superintendents would conduct testing within their district, but could only use it to gain information about their students, they couldn't compare it nationally or statewide. People believed that there was a problem with this because they saw the value in being able to compare data. They believed that if they were able to compare data they would be able to find what was common between children and also would be able to come up with solutions to problems.