This state assessment at the third-grade level is the first stage of a proposed three-year evaluation cycle of third, sixth, and ninth grades in North Carolina to aid personnel in making accurate decisions regarding improvement in the social studies curriculum. Students were randomly selected to represent the third-grade population in the state and the three geographical regions: Coastal Plains, Piedmont, and Mountains. An experimental objective-referenced social studies instrument was administered to measure students for mastery of selected social studies learning tasks. In addition, a randomly selected subsample of 450 of these students took a test consisting of two questions, administered orally and requiring oral responses. To assess mastery, eight objectives, drawn from the Division of Social Studies document "Social Studies Curriculum Guide for North Carolina," included the following: Information Processing, Physical Environment, Cultural Environment, Cultural Universals, Economic System, Political System, International Relations, and Acting for the General Interest. Results showed that North Carolina's third grade students scored satisfactorily or better on approximately two-thirds of the social studies objectives measured and that regional differences were slight. (ND)