This paper offers recommendations to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on the development of the background questionnaire for the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). The recommendations are from the viewpoint of a researcher interested in applying sophisticated statistical models to address important issues in adult literacy. The paper focuses on five issues, each of which is the subject of a section of the paper: sampling; selection bias; measurement; policy modeling; and gauging cohort effects. Each section considers the scope of the issue and then makes recommendations to NCES. These recommendations include providing all appropriate sampling weights in NAAL data; examining contextual effects on the distribution of literacy ability in the population; considering relevant auxiliary variables that would constitute the selection equation; considering the hypothesized number of factors and including at least four variables measuring each factor in the questionnaire; obtaining retrospective data on general and job-specific literacy-related activities; and exploring the possibility of linking NAAL with existing longitudinal surveys. (Contains 21 references.) (YLB)

A study focused on researchers' use of the English-Language Background Questionnaire (EBQ) portion of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), the results of which were released in 1993. Data were gathered by surveying NALS data users about how they have used the EBQ data, their perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of the EBQ, and their recommendations for changes to the EBQ. A content analysis was also conducted of published research papers that have involved analyses of the EBQ data to determine how the data were used in these research analyses. The study also drew upon recommendations garnered by a series of focus groups conducted by the American Institutes for Research in 1998. These sources were integrated with the study's own analysis of the NALS data. The following changes to the EBQ for future adult literacy assessments were recommended: expand the questions pertaining to educational experiences; expand the section on social and political participation or move the current items to other areas and delete this section; add an item on voter registration; acquire more detailed information regarding work history, wages, and parents' occupations; expand the section pertaining to literacy practices; and gather information on technological literacy practices. (Appendixes include 34 references; instruments; and studies examined for content review.) (YLB)

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.

Statistics education as proposed in this framework can promote the must-have competencies for graduates to thrive in the modern world.