Since its inception in 1969, NAEP has served the important function of measuring our nation's educational progress by regularly administering various subject area assessments to nationally representative samples of students. The existence of the two national assessment programs—long-term trend NAEP and main NAEP—makes it possible to meet two important objectives:
• measure student progress over time, and
• as educational priorities change, develop new assessment instruments that reflect current educational content and assessment methodology.
The NAEP long-term trend assessments in reading and mathematics were administered throughout the nation in the 2003–2004 school year to students aged 9, 13, and 17. Because the long-term trend program uses substantially the same assessments decade after decade, it has been possible to chart educational progress since 1971 in reading and 1973 in mathematics.
How Was the NAEP 2004 Long-Term Trend Assessment Developed?
The NAEP long-term trend assessment was developed to give information on the changes in the basic achievement of America's youth. It has been used to monitor trend lines first established 35 years ago, and over the past three decades, results have been reported for students at ages 9, 13, and 17 in mathematics, reading, and science, and in grades 4, 8, and 11 in writing.
At the time of the last long-term trend report (1999), the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) discontinued the assessment in writing for technical reasons. More recently, NAGB decided that changes were needed to the design of the science assessment and, given recent advances in the field of science, to its content. As a result, the science long-term trend assessment was not administered in 2003-2004.
The discontinuation of the writing and science trend assessments provided an opportunity to modify the NAEP long-term trend assessments to reflect current assessment designs and practices. Consequently, a number of changes were implemented in 2004 to revitalize the long-term trend assessments. The changes implemented in 2004 were intended to reflect changes in NAEP policy, maintain the integrity of the long-term trend assessments, and increase the validity of the results obtained.
Changes to the assessment instruments included
• removal of science and writing items,
• inclusion of students with disabilities and English language learners,
• replacement of items that used outdated contexts,
• creation of a separate background questionnaire (439K PDF), (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/bgq/student/04BQ-LTTstudent.pdf)
• elimination of "I don't know" as a response option for multiple-choice items, and
• use of assessment booklets that pertain to a single subject area (whereas in the past, a single assessment booklet may have contained both reading and mathematics items).
Because it was important to know that any changes in assessment results could be attributed to actual changes in student performance rather than to changes in the assessment, a special bridge study was conducted to evaluate how the change to the assessment design and administration procedures would affect assessment results.
The reading and mathematics trend assessments are composed of
• multiple-choice and
• constructed-response questions.
The long-term trend assessment was updated in several ways in 2003. To ensure the comparability of the new assessment and the previous assessments, a bridge study was performed.
2004 Bridge Study
Several changes were made to the long-term trend assessment in 2004 to align it with best current assessment practices and with policies applicable to the NAEP main assessments. According to the new policy of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), reading and mathematics are to be assessed by both the long-term trend instruments and the main NAEP instruments, but science and writing will be assessed only in main NAEP. As a result, changes were needed to remove the sets, or blocks, of questions for science and writing, which had been intermixed with the reading and mathematics blocks in the long-term trend assessment instruments.
The changes provided an opportunity to bring other aspects of the assessment up to date. Considerable progress in testing theory has been made since the late 1960s, when these assessments were first designed, and the 2004 administration provided an opportunity to bring these improvements to the long-term trend assessments.
In addition, since 1996, main NAEP assessments have been providing accommodations to allow more students with disabilities and students who were not fluent in English to participate. Traditionally, the long-term trend assessments have not provided such accommodations. However, in 2004, it was possible to provide accommodations and assess a greater proportion of students.
As a result of these changes, two assessments were given in 2004—a modified assessment that contained many changes from previous assessments, and a bridge assessment that was used to link the modified assessment to the 1999 assessment so the trend line could be continued.
The modified assessment included the following changes:
• replacing outdated material;
• eliminating blocks of items for subjects no longer reported;
• replacing and reorganizing background questions;
• allowing accommodations for students who needed them; and
• changing some administrative procedures, i.e., eliminating audio-paced tapes and using assessment booklets that pertain only to a single subject.
In 2004, students were randomly assigned to take either the bridge assessment or the modified assessment. The bridge assessment replicated the instrument given in 1999 and used the same administration procedures. The modified assessment included the new items and modifications listed above.
The results reported on this website use the data from the bridge assessment to maintain trend lines across years. The modified assessment will provide the basis of comparison for all future assessments, and the bridge will link its results back to the results of the past 30 years.
Comparing the results of the modified and bridge assessments demonstrates that the link between the 2004 bridge and modified assessments successfully continues the trend line.
Download the full long-term trend report for a complete discussion of the bridge study:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005464
Learn more about the main NAEP assessment, the nation's only ongoing assessment of what students know and can do in various subject areas;
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/
View the full long-term trend assessment report: NAEP 2004 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005464
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