Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recently released- The Nation’s Report Card: Science in Action: Hands-On and Interactive Computer Tasks From the 2009 Science Assessment. This report details findings from performance tasks that were given along with the paper-pencil tasks on the 2009 science NAEP.

Click HERE to download a PDF of the report.

Click HERE to examine the tasks from the assessment- some interesting items here that could be useful for designing science performance tasks.

Three key findings from the report:

1. Students were more successful on parts of investigations with limited sets of data and more observational tasks.

2. Students found parts of investigations challenging when they contained multiple variables to manipulate.

3. Students struggled explaining results in conclusions.