How Was the NAEP 2008 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. In 1999, the National Assessment Governing Board discontinued the assessment in writing for technical reasons. In 2004, The Board 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
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.
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