A redesigned NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) should collect original survey and assessment data on achievement in numerous areas beyond math and science. The advice comes from the authors of two new reports from the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. The eight areas they advise assessing are:

• basic academic skills,
• critical thinking and problem solving,
• social skills and work ethic,
• readiness for citizenship and community responsibility,
• foundation for lifelong physical health,
• foundation for lifelong emotional health,
• appreciation of the arts and literature, and
• preparation for skilled work, for those youths not destined for academic college.

Reassessing the Achievement Gap: Fully Measuring What Students Should Be Taught in School summarizes two reports: "A Report Card on Comprehensive Equity: Racial Gaps in the Nation's Youth Outcomes" and a proposal on redesigning NAEP for the purpose of collecting data on the full range of youth outcomes to be sought by schools and other institutions of youth development.

That last phrase, "and other institutions of youth development," is central to the proposal. NAEP would collect data, and states would then be responsible for creating appropriate policy throughout their networks of youth-related organizations. The NAEP report will be published in full in the near future. A third report, due in the fall of 2008 will describe and offer cost estimates of the ingredients of several school and school-related programs that are likely to generate meaningful opportunity for adequate and equitable outcomes in each of the goal areas.

Driving the recommendations is a desire for a fuller, more accurate understanding of an unacceptable achievement gap. The first report estimates the gap in all eight areas between black and white youth. The black-white gap for currently measured basic academic skills is about 29 percentile points. In a national distribution of achievement of basic skills by the time students are about 17 years old, black students are at the 31st percentile, and white students are at the 61st.

Estimates of the gap in the "critical thinking and problem-solving skills" category is about 31 percentile points. In a national distribution of achievement of critical thinking skills by the time students are about 17 years old, black students are at the 25th percentile, and white students are at the 56th.

The gaps for subsequent areas are not quite so alarming, but achievement remains disappointing:

• Social Skills and Work Ethic: 16 percentile points.
• Citizenship and Community Responsibility: 13 percentile points
• Physical Health: 7 percentile points.
• Emotional Health: 5 percentile points.
• Appreciation of the Arts and Literature: 12 percentile points.
• Preparation for Skilled Work: 13 percentile points.

The authors recommend sample sizes large enough support reliable conclusions about the state-by-state achievement of white and of disadvantaged students. This requires data collected for whites, blacks, and Hispanic-American students. They also say that NAEP should assess and survey 20 to 25 year-olds in each of these demographic groups. They estimate that a full cycle of surveys and assessments to generate such data would cost initially cost $45 million, with ongoing costs of $13 million annually beginning with the fourth year following the initial survey.