In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts) wrote:
>
> 1. how are categories of very high, etc. ... translated into 1 to 2
points
> ... or 4 to 7 points? i don't see any particular connection of one to
the other
See the pdf link below. A panel set out cut points based on % of
students failing and % students showing proficiency on the exam. These
cut points were set by a Dept. of Education panel.
>
> 2. we have a problem here of course that the scores in a district are
> averages ... not scores for individual kids in 4th, 8th, and 10th
grades
Actually, each school and in fact each class is evaluated. There isn't
much averaging involved. My daughter's 4th grade class is composed of 3
groups of about 25, is being compared with the 1998 crop of 4th graders.
Since the mean of the 1999 and 2000 groups didn't improve by 2 points,
the school "Failed." My local school district's schools failed in
every category, even though the mean MCAS scores are among the highest
in the state.
>
> 3. what does passing mean in this context?
I posted a longer response to Dr. Dawson on another thread, but passing
for a good school means a 2 point increase on the 200 to 280 point
scale. For a poor school not to fail, the score had to increase by more
than 4 points between 1998 and the mean of the 1999-2000 scores. Few of
the poor performing schools met this goal.
>
> 4. let's say there are 50 districts ... and, for last year ... using
4th
> grade as an example ... we line up from highest mean for a district
down to
> lowest mean for a district .... then, in the adjacent column, we put
what
> those same districts got as means on the tests for the 4th grade this
year
> ....
>
> we would expect this correlation to be very high ... for two reasons
...
> first, means are being used and second,
No, Each one of the 1539 schools in the state was evaluated. The
districts were simply sent the results on the percent of their schools
that had failed to meet their targets or that had met their target
increases. All schools had to increase their scores, with the poor
schools being expected to improve by 6 points and the best schools by 2
points.
from year to year ... school
> district's population does not change much ... so if one district has
on
> average, a lower scoring group of 4th grade students .... that is what
is
> going to be the case next year
>
> thus, given this ... we would NOT expect there to be much regression
to the
> mean ... since the r between these two variables i bet is very high
For the top performing schools, I think regression to the mean does
occur, but it is very difficult to assess with the DOE documents. I
read everything that I could get on their pages, but I couldn't find a
description of correlations or standard deviations anywhere.
>
> 5. but, whatever the case is in #4 ... what does this have to do with
> CHANGE IN MEAN SCORES? or changes in the top group of at least 1/2
points
> and in the low groups changes of 4/7 points? the lack of r between the
two
> years of 4th grade means on these test just means that their relative
> positions change with the higher ones not looking as relatively high
...
> and the low ones not looking quite so relatively low BUT, your
position
> could change up or down relatively speaking regardless of whether your
mean
> test performance went up or down ... or stayed the same
>
> bottom line: we need alot more information about exactly what was done
...
> and how improvement goals were defined in the first place ... before
we can
> make any reasonable inference that regression to the mean would have
> anything to do with better districts being bad mouthed and poorer
> performing districts being praised
There are a number of documents on the MA Dept of education web site
justifying this evaluation. None do a good job in my opinion, but here
is the one I found to be the most relevant:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/ata/ratings00/rateguide00.pdf
The summary table for the 1539 state schools is presented here:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/ata/ratings00/SPRPDistribTables.html
--
Eugene D. Gallagher
ECOS, UMASS/Boston
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