http://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings11/342-2011.pdf
Can this be right? If right, it helps reduce the computational demand off the procedure. Page 4:
"When thousands of persons take a test, the procedure takes a long time to estimate the parameters. It is well known that the Rasch model gives the same parameter estimates for each person who receives the same total score. So, variable ‘person’ is able to be replaced with variable ‘total’ when all examinees answer all items as shown by Nord (2008). After the model is fit, the estimate of the parameter for each person is equal to the estimate of the parameter of the total score corresponding to the person’s total score. The third code example and its output are shown as follows:"