The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1997 Arts Education Assessment represents the first comprehensive approach on a national level to the development of methods for assessing student performance in dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts. The Assessment reflects the conviction that the arts are essential for every child's complete development and education. The goal of the NAEP 1997 Arts Education Assessment Framework was to obtain a comprehensive picture of what U.S. arts education is and what it ought to be. A special matrix was designed to analyze all four arts in terms of content and process. The content included knowledge and skills, including perceptual, technical, expressive, and intellectual/reflective skills. The processes included creating, performing, and responding. The NAEP assessment developed two special types of tasks for the tests: paper-and-pencil tasks and performance tasks. Paper-and-pencil tasks required students to respond to multiple choice questions, short constructed responses, and extended constructed responses. Special scoring guides were designed to discriminate among, and give credit for, the full range of possible student answers. The performance tasks were especially complex. The NAEP Arts Education Assessment created tasks that were suitable for a variety of students with a variety of educational backgrounds. (JEH)