February 27, 2015

Spencer Niles
Dean for the School of Education
The College of William and Mary
PO Box 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
Dear Dr. Niles:
The National Assessment Governing Board and NORC at the University of Chicago wish to express gratitude to
Julie Marsh of your staff who served as a content reviewer and panelist from February 9 to 13 at a Content
Alignment Institute. We are deeply appreciative of your commitment to the project by providing time and
schedule flexibility to allow Ms. Marsh to participate.
The project provided critical input and feedback for the content alignment studies of the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) and ACT EXPLORE assessments being conducted this year. A total of 32
educators of mathematics and reading were selected through a national invitation and application process. We
congratulate all of the educators for their excellent work and their enthusiastic attitude all week, considering the
long hours of individual review, group discussion and consensus building needed to complete the content
analyses.
One key purpose of the content alignment studies is to examine the degree to which NAEP and other broadly-used
student assessments provide useful data regarding the academic preparation of students for high school study and
for entrance to college. The educators that participated in the Institute provided essential input for these studies by
sharing their perspectives as experienced classroom teachers and assessment specialists.
More information and press releases about this research project can be found on the NORC web site at
http://www.norc.org/Research/Projects/Pages/content-alignment-of-neap-grade-assessments-and-act-explore.aspx,
and at the Governing Boards website at https://www.nagb.org. If you have a specific question about the project,
please contact Rolf Blank at NORC (blank-rolf@norc.org).
Once again, we extend our sincere thanks and commend each participating educator for making an important
research contribution to the nations education.
Sincerely,

Cornelia S. Orr, Ph.D.

Executive Director
National Assessment Governing Board
c:

Rolf K. Blank, Ph.D.

NORC Project Director

Cynthia Simko, Associate Project Director, NORC

Norman L. Webb, Project Technical Coordinator, Wisconsin Center for Education Products and Services
Munira Mwalimu, Contracting Officer, National Assessment Governing Board
Michelle Blair, Contract Officer Representative, National Assessment Governing Board

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