Each year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), asks thousands of schools and students to participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Their participation allows NCES to provide accurate information nationwide on how U.S. students perform in a variety of academic subjects. The NAEP uses a multistage sampling method to select the schools and students who will participate in a given NAEP assessment. For these assessments, NCES began by dividing the country into about 1,000 geographical sampling units and then arranging schools in categories similar to those used in selection of the sampling units. NCES deliberately oversamples private schools and schools with high majority populations. NAEP national and state assessments are done separately. Once a school has been selected for either a state or national assessment, students within the school are classified by grade and then selected at random. NAEP cannot accept either schools or students as voluntary participants in NAEP. The sampling techniques that NCES uses in NAEP allow NCES to produce detailed results on student performance while using only a small sample and a minimum of student time for administration of the assessment. (SLD)