This holiday season, we’re thankful for all the great team members, researchers, interns, and students that make up the NAEP research community. Your work with data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress helps us gain a greater understanding of K-12 student academic achievement, providing vital tools to inform educational policy and practice. Let’s take a look back at some of the community members we’ve highlighted this year.

Looking back on workshop and internship alumni:

• NAEP Data Training Workshop Participant Kenneth Elpus on Using NAEP Data to Explore the Arts
  The NAEP R&D team had a chance to catch up with 2019 NAEP Data Training Workshop participant Kenneth Elpus to learn about his research in music education using NAEP data. Elpus spoke with us about his 2022 paper in the Journal of Research in Music Education, “Middle School Music Uptake and Achievement: Evidence From the 2016 Arts National Assessment of Educational Progress,” as well as his experience in the NAEP Data Training Workshop and how it informed and aided his research.
• Spotlighting NAEP Doctoral Internship Program Alumni: Eric Ho
  Eric Ho joined the 2022 cohort of NAEP Doctoral Internship Program interns from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Education’s Social Research Methodology graduate division. He chose to focus on the Data Visualization topic area and was able to present his project for the internship, “Operation REQUISITE – Re-envisioning Educational Quantitative User Information: Shiny Interface to Explore,” at the 2023 National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) Annual Meeting.
• Spotlighting NAEP Doctoral Internship Program Alumni: Huan (Hailey) Kuang
  Hailey Kuang joined the 2020 cohort of NAEP Doctoral Internship Program interns from the University of Florida College of Education’s Research and Evaluation Methodology Program. She focused on the Process Data Assessment Operations topic area, and her project, “Comparison of disengagement levels and the impact of disengagement on item parameters between PISA 2015 and PISA 2018 in the United States,” was published in Large-Scale Assessments in Education earlier this year.
• Spotlighting Current NAEP Doctoral Interns: Jazzmine Waugh and Talal Khan
  NAEP doctoral interns Jazzmine Waugh and Talal Khan (of the University of Washington and the University of Hawaii, respectively) talked about their research interests in areas such as climate change and natural language processing. They talked about how the internship would inform their career choices and aid in future employment.
• Spotlighting Current NAEP Doctoral Interns: Danielle Siegel
  NAEP doctoral intern Danielle Siegel of the University of California, Davis, talked about her interests in measurement and structural equation modeling. She indicated that the internship had provided her with valuable insights into large-scale data analysis and methodology that can be applied in all of her research.
• Spotlighting Current NAEP Doctoral Interns: Radhika Kapoor
  NAEP doctoral intern Radhika Kapoor of Stanford University shared her educational background in economics and her research interests in assessment and measurement. She talked about how working with the process data team as part of the internship was incredibly valuable, as she was able to learn from researchers on the cutting edge of this work.

Looking back on some of the achievements of the NAEP R&D team:

• NAEP Process Data Researchers Create Winning Data Visualization
  NAEP Center for Process Data Researchers Ruhan Circi and Juanita Hicks won the 2023 Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice (EM:IP) Cover Graphic/Data Visualization Competition. Their visualization comparing traditional data and process data measurements of the percentages of students who did not reach an item in a NAEP assessment was featured on the cover of the most recent EM:IP issue, published in September.
• Highlighting Article From NAEP Process Data Researchers
  NAEP Process Data Researchers Ruhan Circi and Burhan Ogut recently published an article in the National Council on Measurement in Education’s journal Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) to explore the relationship between high school coursetaking and college enrollment.
• New Mini Review From NAEP Researchers: “Automatic Item Generation: Foundations and Machine Learning-Based Approaches for Assessments”
  NAEP researchers Ruhan Circi and Juanita Hicks, along with Emmanuel Sikali, acting branch chief of reporting and dissemination in the Assessment Division at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), published their mini-review article titled “Automatic Item Generation: Foundations and Machine Learning-Based Approaches for Assessments.” The article was published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Education.

Stay tuned to the R&D Hub and subscribe to the R&D program’s mailing list to stay up to date on all the NAEP research, workshops, internships, and other opportunities available to our community.