Hager Sharp to support International Assessment

This international assessment, given by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), allows the U.S. to see how our 15-year-old students compare to students from around the globe in reading, math, and science.  Hager Sharp will be building on its extensive experience in developing and producing materials that target education and youth to increase awareness and participation in this voluntary assessment. The participation challenge faced by PISA is similar to the one the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) encountered with 12th graders.  To help tackle the twelfth-grade challenge, we worked with students, teachers, and principals to research and develop effective communications strategies that would encourage high school seniors to participate. This outreach increased student participation for twelfth-graders on NAEP by 13 percentage points in 2007 – to 79 percent – from an all-time low of 66 percent in 2005.  Hager Sharp will again be working with Westat on this project, as we did with NAEP, and with Shattuck and Associates, to conduct focus group research with students and principals. We will be developing targeted materials to engage students and schools to participate in the assessment.  Following the administration and scoring of results Hager Sharp will draw on its extensive experience with data releases – including the Department of Education and the Annie E. Casey Foundation – to disseminate the results.