News & Announcements


NAEP Studies SIG Annual Summary: 2021-2022

The SIG Leadership team met virtually monthly beginning in May 2021 on the following dates:

  • May 11, 2021
  • June 8, 2021
  • July 13, 2021
  • August 10, 2021
  • September 15, 2021
  • October 20, 2021
  • November 17, 2021
  • December 15, 2021
  • January 19, 2022
  • February 16, 2022
  • March 16, 2022

The team was comprised of the following individuals:

  • Andrew Hudacs, Chair
  • Amy Dresher, Chair Elect
  • Ning Rui, Program Co-Chair
  • Bitnara Jasmine Park, Program Co-Chair
  • Judy Tang, Treasurer
  • Renee Savoie, Secretary
  • Robert Perkins, Webmaster
  • Haobai Zhang, Graduate Student Representative
  • Angela Battaglia, Communication Support

The monthly meetings were scheduled with the following core set of recurring topics while other relevant topics were added as appropriate.

  • Review/Acceptance of meeting minutes from the prior meeting
  • Officer Reports
    • Program Co-Chairs—updates on the session/paper review process and progress. Establishing the AERA 2022 program for the NAEP Studies SIG including the business meeting.
    • Treasurer—updates on SIG finances and membership
  • SIG website and social media update (Facebook and LinkedIn)—Updates provided by the Webmaster
  • SIG Newsletter Updates—typically reported by the Chair who attends newsletter meetings
  • NAEP Updates (provided monthly by the Secretary who serves as a NAEP State Coordinator)

Additionally, many monthly meetings reserved time for discussing the topics listed below.

  • Professional learning opportunities to be sponsored by the SIG
  • Establishing a NAEP Studies SIG Award
  • Increasing SIG membership
  • SIG Officer Election

SIG Achievements in 2021-22

Minutes from every meeting are saved in a shared folder accessible to the leadership team. This repository is helpful in generating the annual summary of activities and will serve as a resource when there is a transition in SIG leadership.

In 2020-21, the SIG started work to establish a NAEP Studies SIG Award. The work continued into 2021-22 with multiple requests for additional information and refinements. The AERA Executive Committee reviewed and approved the application at its January 2022 meeting. The NAEP Studies SIG will issue its first call for nominations for the newly established Outstanding Paper Award in August 2022 and the winner will be notified by February 2023. The recipient and winning publication will be showcased during the AERA 2023 NAEP Studies SIG Business Meeting.

The SIG’s online presence has continued to improve in 2021-22. The SIG page on the AERA website has been regularly and quickly updated based on suggestions shared during the monthly leadership team meetings including advertising upcoming events hosted by the SIG and others. The Webmaster continues to maintain the SIG’s YouTube channel and the SIG’s Gmail account - AERANAEPStudiesSIG@gmail.com.

At the request of SIG member Dr. Michael Solem of Texas State University, the SIG promoted Educational Equity in the Social Studies: A Research Symposium, which was held on August 3, 2021. The event was organized by the National Center for Research in Geography Education and featured presentations by researchers who leverage large-scale federal datasets to study inequalities in K-12 student outcomes in geography, civics, and U.S. history.

The SIG Treasurer and Program Co-Chairs led the effort to organize two SIG-sponsored webinars.

New NCES EDGE Program and SIDE Study—On August 12, 2021, the SIG presented a webinar discussion of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE) program and the spatially interpolated demographic and economic (SIDE) estimates study. The presentation focused on learning why demographic, geographic, and economic data are crucial in large-scale studies and how they can aid in examining various group differences in educational outcomes. Dr. William Ward and Dr. Douglas Geverdt of NCES discussed the purposes of the EDGE program, how the estimates are developed, and what it means for researchers who want to use the NAEP data and other NCES-sponsored data collection.

Analytic Tools to Explore NAEP Data—This session hosted on December 15, 2021, was designed to showcase the NAEP Data Explorer, a freely available online analysis tool that requires no programming skills, and EdSurvey, an R statistical package designed specifically for NCES large-scale assessment data including NAEP.  Presenters Paul Bailey, Ting Zhang, and Alison Filbey, from the American Institutes for Research (AIR), provided a brief introduction to the various tools available to explore and analyze NAEP data and shared resources for those who wanted to learn more. B. Jasmine Park, also from AIR, moderated the webinar. The recording of this webinar is an excellent opportunity for graduate students and researchers to learn how to better utilize NAEP data in their research.

The SIG issued its first quarterly newsletter in Fall 2021. Credit for this achievement goes to members of the Newsletter Subcommittee and other SIG members who contributed to the work.

Newsletter Subcommittee Members:

  • Angela Battaglia
  • Jeremy Ellis
  • Andrew Hudacs
  • Paul Kleinert
  • B. Jasmine Park
  • Yuxi Qiu
  • Judy Tang
  • Haobai Zhang

The SIG Chair with the support of members, recruited individuals willing to run for SIG officer roles in the Winter 2022 election. The SIG was able to put forth a ballot including two candidates for the following positions: Program Co-Chair, Treasurer, and Newsletter Editor. The other positions (Secretary, Chair-Elect, Webmaster) will be filled through a special election at a later date.

The work of the Program Co-Chairs resulted in a final AERA 2022 program that includes two SIG sponsored symposiums, two paper sessions, and the annual business meeting, which included a presentation by Ebony Walton of NCES.  The slides from her presentation can be found here.