National Assessment is a data gathering project designed to provide information, in ten subject areas, about knowledge, skills, understandings and attitudes of young people in this country, and to assess changes in these variables over time. The data is collected and reported at the item level. Each exercise was developed with emphasis on content validity, and is geared to sample a specific objective within a subject area. A striking feature of the first National Assessment report is that there are no scores or norms with which to compare results. Instead the individual exercises with the percent choosing or producing each response (p-values), both correct and incorrect, are given. This technique allows the reader to evaluate results and draw inferences for himself rather than just review an average or summary. Also, by looking at the P-values of wrong responses, considerable light may be shed on commonly held misconceptions. Generalizations discussed are based on exercises from the subject areas of Science and Citizenship, with only partial National Assessment results available for the latter, and are drawn by looking at the exercises as a total set of exercises, not as a total score. They are not to be construed as representing the National Assessment's viewpoint, as the selection of these generalizations, rather than others that might be drawn from the data, is a personal one. (Author/CK) Aspect of National Assessment (NAEP) dealt with in this document: ProgramDescription (Program Goals).