The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) approach to developing assessments is described. NAEP will solicit views concerning assessment objectives and use the consensus approach. NAEP results can impact educational policy and school and classroom practices. Several policies have been adopted to provide improved information about specific subject area achievement. Subject areas will be selected to address issues of national concern and information needs. Each biennial assessment will include four subject areas. Subject area assessments will be more closely integrated and related and will include reading. Innovative item development will be assured through adoption of several policies. Each subject area assessment will contain open ended items and assessment of higher order reasoning skills will be emphasized. Assessment results will be more useful to a variety of audiences as a result of NAEP adoption of new policies. An increased scope of student level and school level background information will be collected. The collection of background information about teachers that can be directly related to student achievement has been initiated. Types of information may be classified as program related variables, impact of policies and practices, effect of teaching strategies and school curricular policies related to specific subject areas, and equal learning opportunity. (DWH)