The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the "Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally representative, continuing assessment of what U.S. students know and can do in various subject areas. NAEP provides a comprehensive measure of students' learning at critical junctures in their school experience. The NAEP has been conducted regularly since 1969. The goals of this "Guide" are to provide readers with an overview of the project and to help them understand the philosophical approach, procedures, analysis, and psychometric underpinnings of the NAEP. It acquaints readers with the NAEP resources, demonstrates how the survey design matches the NAEP role as an indicator of national achievement, and describes some of the methods used in the 1997 and 1998 assessments. The guide follows a question and answer format, presenting the 21 questions most commonly asked about the NAEP and following them with answers and background information. Questions relate to: (1) the nature of the NAEP; (2) the subjects it assesses; (3) participation and confidentiality; (4) the availability of information to parents and the public; (5) evaluation and validation; (6) assessment development; (7) accommodation of students with disabilities or limited English proficiency; (8) assessment innovations; (9) results; (10) scoring; (11) analysis of results; (12) comparability of results; (13) NAEP reports; (14) contextual background data; (15) use of NAEP results by educators; (16) use of NAEP results in education and policy issues; (17) linkage with international assessment data; (18) the student sample; (19) student and school participation; (20) use of matrix sampling; and (21) data collection procedures. (Contains 29 references.) (SLD)