In November, 1985, the Council of Chief State School Officers adopted a plan for developing educational indicators. The plan provided for the development of a common measure of student achievement to be collected across states beginning in 1988-89. In order to design a student achievement assessment program, the states were asked to give their…

This is the third periodic report on the programs and plans of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The challenge facing the NCES is to collect and analyze data that track the growth and change in educational experience in the United States. Current programs toward this goal, future plans, and major publications of the NCES are…