​​NAEP Technical DocumentationBatching and Scanning Student Booklets and Questionnaires

Once the presence of all paper-based student booklets listed on the administration form for a session are confirmed, the booklets, along with a scannable header which contains the school number, session number, and number of books present in the session, are forwarded to the batching area where they are put into batches. Each batch is assigned a unique number. This number, created on Work Flow Management (WFM) system for all scannable documents, facilitates the internal tracking of the batches and allows departmental resource planning.

All booklets listed on the administration form, whether they are used or not, are sent through the regular scanning process. The only exception to this policy is a bio-hazard (e.g., books with blood on them, etc.) received. Bio-hazard books are examined to determine if they are still able to be processed and, if not, are deemed as absent or other, and removed from the security list manually and disposed of in a secure manner.

Three capture methods are used to transcribe the student responses during the scanning of paper booklets to a computerized form. 

• Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) - captures multiple-choice responses during a single pass of each sheet of a booklet and questionnaire.
• Image Scanning - captures images of the open-ended constructed-responses for human scoring.
• Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) - captures hand-written responses in an ICR box located on the booklet or questionnaire cover.

Unused/unassigned booklets not listed on the administration form received are forwarded to security processing. The booklet ID bar-codes are scanned, read, and recorded into a separate file. If intact bundles of unused booklets are returned from the field, the bar-code on the bundle slip is scanned, eliminating the need to scan each booklet in the bundle individually. The security scanned file and the processed documents file are later compared to the original bundle security file for individual booklet matching. All unused materials received are then inventoried and sent to the materials, distribution, processing, and scoring (MDPS) secure warehouse facility for storage, awaiting authorization from NCES to securely recycle them.

Paper questionnaires of all types and subjects, including both school and teacher questionnaires, are batched together for scanning and editing. The materials processing staff batch the questionnaires using a batch/stack header(s) to identify the batch number for tracking purposes. The WFM system assigns a batch number for tracking through each processing stage. Just like the student booklets, data are edited and suspect cases are resolved before further processing. In 2020, no school and teacher questionnaires were administered either online or printed hard copies. 

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