The Study On Assessment Of Civics In American Primary And Secondary Schools

It has established a relative perfect system for Civic Education in American primary and secondary schools, which has the clear study target, detailed learning schemes and implementation plans. Particularly, in the aspect of doing assessment in civic education, it is always leading to other countries in the world. National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) in America is a long-term evolutional program on almost every subject in American primary and secondary schools. Since NAEP was founded, Civics has been taken part in the assessment activities. Till now, there are about six times. The result of NAEP-Civics in each time would be described in a formal report, which would be delivered by the authority to education administrators, schools and the public. Thus, all of them could know children's achievement in civic knowledge, civic skills and civic dispositions.This paper aims to study the assessment in American primary and secondary schools based on NAEP program. Generally, it consists of three parts introduction, text and conclusion. In the part of introduction, it includes the significant of this study, recent situation on the study, study methods and the innovation points on this study, as well as definitions for some relative conceptions. As for the main text, it is divided into six parts. Firstly, it explains the historical development of NAEP and its constitution. In 1960s, the federal government intended to know the children's achievement in primary and secondary schools, thus it needed a formal program to evaluate those students'behavior in their study. In this circumstance, NAEP was founded. NAEP has experienced four stages to get the perfect one till now. Secondly, on the basis of NAEP development, this part mainly explores assessment framework in NAEP-Civics, which is discussed from Civic knowledge, civic skills and civic dispositions. Thirdly, NAEP program has set the standards for Civics assessment, which can also be called as text questionnaire scoring standards. The following part, it gives the comprehensive understanding of NAEP-Civics assessment process, which includes questionnaire design, questions design as well as students sample selection and examination implementation. Fifthly, it gives the summary of NAEP-Civics results in the last four times, then it focuses on exploring results in 1998 and 2006 NAEP-Civics, meanwhile, it also analyses results influential factors. The last part, it concludes the characteristics and deficiencies of NAEP-Civics. While, considering our Chinese civic education, NAEP-Civics gives our several reference and inspiration. In the part of conclusions, it exclaims that our China could also establish perfect assessment system through learning American experience in NAEP-Civics, thus to promote our nationals civic education development in primary and secondary schools.