NAEP Technical DocumentationProcessing Schedule and Overall Counts for the 2004 Assessment

2004 Processing Schedule

2004 Student Participation and Session Information

The 2004 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend assessment was administered to students at ages 9, 13, and 17 at a national level in mathematics and reading. The age 13 students were assessed during the fall (October to December), age 9 students during the winter (January to mid-March), and age 17 students during the spring (mid-March through May). In addition, during the regular NAEP testing window (last week of January through the first week of March), NAEP pilot tests were conducted in preparation for the science assessment at grades 4, 8, and 12 and pre-calibrated the new items for the 2005 assessment in mathematics and reading. Normally we don't report or provide descriptions of pilot test materials, but in this case it is integral to Processing Materials.

The processing schedule includes the following tasks:

printing of test booklets and questionnaires,
materials packaging and distribution,
receipt control,
data capture through image and optical mark recognition scanning,
data editing and validation,
training and performance scoring of trend constructed-response items,
performance scoring only of the remainder of the constructed-response items (with item development staff training the pilot and first year operational items),
data file creation, and
inventory control and materials storage.

In total, more than 125,000 student booklets (81,500 long-term trend, as well as 44,000 pilot and pre-calibration) were received and processed. In addition to the student documents processed, there were 27,900 questionnaires processed. These included fourth-grade teacher questionnaires, eighth-grade mathematics teacher questionnaires, eighth-grade teacher questionnaires, fourth-grade school questionnaires, eighth-grade school questionnaires, SD/ELL (students with disabilities or English language learners) questionnaires, and ELL-only questionnaires. Tracking forms (administration schedules and rosters of questionnaires) were also processed. The SD/ELL questionnaires for long-term trend could be completed online or in traditional paper form.

Scoring of 2004 NAEP long-term trend assessment occurred at different times in Iowa City, Mesa, and Virginia Beach. The interrater reliability differences and mean-score comparison between the 1999 long-term trend assessment scoring and the 2004 long-term trend assessment scoring for age 13 in reading indicated that the trend/bridge scoring should be redone, so this rescoring was done from April 19 to May 18. There were 1,082,923 mathematics items and 174,290 reading items scored.

Age 13 scoring
- Mathematics – Iowa City (January 13-22)
- Reading – Iowa City (January 7-27)
- Reading Trend (rescore) only – Iowa City (April 19-May 18)

Age 9 scoring
- Mathematics – Mesa (March 15-19)
- Reading Operational – Virginia Beach (March 2-April 2)
- Reading Trend only – Iowa City (March 8-April 2)

Age 17 scoring
- Mathematics – Iowa City (May 24-June 8)
- Reading – Iowa City (May 19-June 25)

The 2004 NAEP assessment scoring occurred over a three-week period (March 22 through April 9) at two sites. There were a total of 875,516 responses scored during this three-week period: 430,226 math responses, 362,592 reading responses, and 82,698 science responses.

Mathematics and science training and scoring were completed in Mesa, Arizona.
Reading training and scoring was completed in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Last updated 20 January 2009 (JL)

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