The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a congressionally mandated project of the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. It assesses what students in the United States should know and be able to do in geography, reading, writing, mathematics, science, U.S. history, the arts, civics, and other academic subjects. This document presents a framework and recommendations for the 1996 NAEP mathematics assessment that are intended to reflect recent curricular emphases and objectives; include what various scholars, practitioners, and interested citizens believe should be in the assessment; and maintain ties to prior assessments to permit the reporting of trends in student achievement across time. Chapters include: (1) "Overview of Recommendations"; (2) "Framework for the Assessment" which discusses content strands, mathematical dimensions, families of items, percentage of items, item balance, calculators, and manipulatives; (3) "1996 NAEP Mathematics Objectives" which includes mathematical content areas and assessment strands; number sense, properties, and operations; measurement; geometry and spatial sense; data analysis, statistics and probability; and algebra and functions; (4) "Cognitive Abilities" which highlights mathematical power and mathematical abilities including conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge, and problem solving; and (5) "Item Types" which discusses multiple-choice items, open-ended items, extended open-ended items, and scoring extended open-ended items. Contains 12 references. (JRH)