Score the Assessment

After students have entered their responses on their digital assessment tablets, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) representatives submit the response data from the administrator's tablet to a central server so that the responses can be exported for scoring.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) oversees the scoring of multiple-choice items electronically, and employs human scorers for short and extended constructed-response items. NCES is also responsible for developing scoring guides that match criteria in assessment frameworks, recruiting and training qualified scorers, and monitoring scoring consistency.

NCES follows the NAEP scoring process which implements quality control and validity checks at each stage of a five-stage process:

1. Rubric Development: Develop scoring guides that match criteria in assessment frameworks.
2. Training Materials Development: Develop training materials after receiving actual student responses to the items during a pilot assessment.
3. Pilot scoring: Identify and address any mismatches between what NCES expected from students, how they interpreted the item, and what students actually provided.
4. Operational Scoring: Seek to develop consensus/agreement by having the team score consistently according to the rubric and training sets.
5. Trend Scoring/Monitoring: Maintain consensus by scoring consistently with how items were scored in previous years.