At 01:57 PM 8/27/01 -0300, Robert J. MacG. Dawson wrote:
> The focussed test isn't an entirely bad idea; it does allow a
> genuine D
>student to avoid getting blown out of the water by questions intended to
>discriminate between A and B students. However, it seems like a very
>poor way to carry the idea out.
>
>
> An obvious approach that would seem to give the advantages hoped for
>from the focussed test without the disadvantages would be just to group
>questions in the original test in roughly increasing order of
>difficulty. One might (I'm not so sure that this would be a good idea)
>put between each group a rubric along the lines of
>
>===============================================================
> PROGRESS CHECKPOINT 1
> If you have got the right answers to 15 of the preceding 20 questions
>you have already passed (50%).
> If you have got the right answers to 18 of the preceding 20 questions
>you have already got at least a C- (60%).
> The questions below are mostly more advanced. Right answers to any of
>them will raise your numerical mark further and may raise your letter
>grade.
> KEEP ON GOING!
>===============================================================
yeah but ... they could do that from day 1 ... in a CAT format ... the
first time 10th graders take the test ... why wait till retake 3 or retake 4?
why waste 10th graders time the first go round ... ????
all of this begs the question though ... that the item ... maybe more than
one ... are terribly bad items to be putting on high stakes tests like
these ... even if they have 100 retakes
someone in mass. ... or the company that mass. contracts for to do the
tests ... is NOT doing their homework ... PRIOR to having these tests
finalized ... printed ... and administered
> Alternatively one could use icons - say Happy Faces - to identify
> a set
>of recommended easier questions that nobody should quit without
>attempting, if there was a reason to use the order to encode something
>else.
or ... sad faces that mean ... unless you are really smart ... DON'T TRY ME!
> -Robert Dawson
>
>
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_________________________________________________________
dennis roberts, educational psychology, penn state university
208 cedar, AC 8148632401, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
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