In 1996, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessed the knowledge and skills of students in the areas of earth science, life science, and physical science. It also collected information related to the background of students (grades 4, 8, and 12), their teachers (grades 4 and 8), and the schools they attended (grades 4, 8, and 12). This report is intended primarily for science teachers; hence, the results presented relate directly to student performance, classroom practices, and school climate. This report also discusses students' attitudes and beliefs about science. The report is divided into four parts. In the first part (chapter 1), an overview of the assessment is provided. This includes information about the framework used in the development of the assessment, a description of how the assessmet was administered to students, and an explanation of how to interpret NAEP results. In the second part (chapters 2, 3, and 4), examples of questions and student responses are presented. These chapters are divided by grade. The third part (chapters 5 and 6) contains information collected from students, teachers, and school administrators about classroom practices, student motivation, and parental involvement in learning. Finally, the fourth part contains appendices offering a fuller description of the procedures used for the NAEP 1996 science assessment (appendix A), scoring guides for questions discussed in chapters 2, 3, and 4 (appendix B), and standard errors for the statistics presented in the report (appendix C). (WRM)