The New Hampshire State Department of Education in conjunction with the state board and the Legislature, has implemented a new statewide educational improvement and assessment program. The purpose of the program is "to establish what New Hampshire students should know and be able to do and to develop and implement effective methods for assessing that learning and its application so that local decisions about curriculum development and delivery can be made." This first "Educational Assessment Report" contains district-level benchmark data on student performance at the end of the primary grades, data that can be the baseline for charting educational progress over time. The statewide assessment New Hampshire uses to evaluate its third-grade students employs a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended items to assess students' knowledge and their ability to apply that knowledge. In this first assessment, third graders were tested in language arts and mathematics. Nearly all of the state's 16,092 third graders took the examination; less than 3% were excluded for language difficulties or learning disabilities. The summaries of results include information on the numbers and percentages of students at each proficiency level, the performance of students in subgroups of interest, and other information districts can use to compare the performance of their students to that of other districts. Information is summarized for the whole state for language arts and mathematics, and for each of the state's districts. (Contains three tables.) (SLD)