Stan and All -- A slightly different slant from a lurking high school teacher.
One probably should check to see if sampling is legal under the legislation, both state and No Child Left Behind. It may well be that an actual census is required. Under NCLB, I believe, at least 95% of the students must be tested. Whether all those tests must be scored under the legislation is a different question, but not an insignificant one! -- Chris Chris Olsen George Washington High School 2205 Forest Drive SE Cedar Rapids, IA (319)-398-2161 > -----Original Message----- > From: Stan Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 10:28 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Sample Size Question > > > Eric Lund <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in sci.stat.edu: > >In Indiana, the school accountability legislation calls for locally > >produced assesments to be used. An assessment is to be > given to about > >1600 students in the high school in which I teach. This assessment > >will be given each September and May starting with the 2003-2004 > >school year. How large of a sample must be drawn from this > population > >in order to approximate the mean score for all of the students? > > The answer depends on three things: the population standard > deviation, the level of confidence you want in your estimate, and > the amount of spread you're willing to tolerate in the estimate. For > instance, if you can accept an estimate with a spread of plus or > minus 80 points at 95% confidence, you can take a smaller sample > than if you need a spread of no more than 20 points at 95% > confidence. > > However... > > If I understand your scenario, you don't really need to do any > sampling. You'll have the score of every student who took the test, > so you can compute the population mean score exactly. > > -- > Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA > http://OakRoadSystems.com > "Life! Don't talk to _me_ about life!" > . > . > ================================================================= > Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the > problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: > . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . > ================================================================= > . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
