At 01:33 PM 8/28/01 -0500, Jay Warner wrote:
>Suggest we step back a minute.
by de facto definition ... the MCAS tests ... are intended to convey ...
MINIMUM skills/knowledge that they expect all high school GRADUATES to have
... they certainly cannot purport to test and/or represent anything higher
than that
actually, even LESS than that ... because, there is some 'cut' score ...
and, we all know that (as an example given a 40 item test say) if the cut
score were 30 ... there are essentially an infinite number of ways one
could get thirty correct (even by knowledge ... forgetting totally about
guessing) ... in fact, they could have missed each and every one of the 6
stat items
thus ... i kind of think it is pretty hard to argue that any tests like
these ... are measuring or can be assuming to measure ... much in the way
of higher level skills
if we take the infamous #39 item ... where the options were (if i recall)...
A. mean only
B. median only
C. range and mean
D. range and median
well, even if we accepted this item as "fair" ...
a student looks at the graph ... sees that there is a bunch of stuff in the
boxplot ... and then sees A and B ... without too much thought ... they
could say, it can't be mean or median ONLY ... there must be more you can
do with that boxplot than that ... so, without knowing anything of
consequence about boxplots ... you are down to a two choice item
thus, for even the uninformed ... we have essentially a T and F item
but, if you did happen to KNOW that the boxplot uses the median ... then
the fact that the RANGE is part of the C and D options ... means the term
RANGE is irrelevant to the item ... given that A and B are just too
restrictive (because of the use of the term ONLY) and C and D have RANGE as
a common element ... so, if you did pick D ... then it has to be because
you knew that isolated "fact" ... which certainly is about as low level as
you can get
_________________________________________________________
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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