Commissioned papers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have recommended new roles for NAEP, but its system of governance, as conceived in the 1960s, was not designed for all these functions. The NAEP Policy Committee, revised in 1978, never envisioned the current interest in a linkage system relating local and state assessments of academic achievement to NAEP curricular domains and measurement system. New technologies such as item response theory (IRT) make it feasible to use domain descriptions and item pools for such linkages. The current law, Public Law 95-561 as amended in 1981, needs to be augmented with the new functions envisioned by the Study Group; Section 1242, specifying the Assessment Policy Committee (APC) should be revised to encompass fair comparisons among states and local school districts. The APC membership should also reflect the new emphasis. Members should be appointed by the Secretary of Education, rather than by the organization conducting the assessment. The APC, ideally housed within the Federal Government, would govern the activities of the contractor who administers and analyzes the testing. Sections of Public Law 95-561 and Public Law 98-511, a description of The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (created by Congress in 1959), and a summary of the structure of the APC are appended. (GDC)