This document contains four issues of "NAEPfacts," a report series about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Issue 1 discusses data from the NAEP 1996 Long-Term Reading Assessment, which shows that overall student reading performance has increased for both 9- and 13-year-olds. Issue 2 reports that data from the NAEP 1996 Long-Term Mathematics Assessment show a positive linear trend for all three age groups studied since the first assessment in 1973, indicating improving scores over time. All subgroups, including Blacks and Hispanics, showed positive linear trends as well, at all three age groups. Issue 3, "Long-Term Trends in Student Science Performance," reports that data from the NAEP 1996 Long-Term Trend Science Assessment show mixed results since the first assessment. Scores for all three age groups studied fell and then rose. Both 9- and 11-year-olds showed an overall increase, but 17-year-olds showed an overall decline. Scores for Whites were higher than scores for Blacks and Hispanics for all three age groups, although scores for 9- and 13-year-old black students did improve, both absolutely and in comparison with white students. Males aged 13 and 17 had higher scores that female students. The focus of issue 4, "Long-Term Trends in Student Writing Performance," is on data from the 1996 Long-Term Trend Writing Assessment that show a decline in scores for grade 11 students over the period from 1984 to 1996. Scores for students in grades 4 and 8 remained unchanged. White students continued to have higher scores than both Blacks and Hispanic students in all three grades, and female students continued to have higher scores than males at all three grades. (SLD)