The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), part of the National Center for Education Statistics, has recently made available (in Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only) this assessment of the educational progress of students at grades 4, 8, and 12, in both public and private schools. "The national results...describe students' mathematics achievement at each grade and within various subgroups of the general population. State-level results for grades 4 and 8 are presented for individual states...that chose to participate in the 1996 state assessment." Among the major findings: students' scores on the NAEP mathematics scale increased for all three grades, and students' performance increased at three different proficiency levels between 1990 and 1996. These results are interesting in light of the rather less positive findings in the recently released Third International Mathematics and Science Study (discussed in the December 13, 1996 issue of The Scout Report).