Re:[tips] SAT and High School grade study

2014-02-19 Thread Mike Wiliams 
Given the level of education debt in the country,  it's obvious that 
colleges and Universities are making far more money than test 
companies.  Has anyone ever calculated how much information is lost by 
converting a perfectly good test average into a letter?  Did I say 
letter?  We actually convert scores into letters?  Imagine if we 
converted IQ scores into letters.  Does anyone know the history of using 
letter grades?  The error in grading as a measurement device contributes 
to the lower predictive power of grades.  If we scored courses better, I 
am willing to bet that they would be completely redundant with SATs etc 
and standardized testing would have no unique predictive power.


Mike Williams

On 2/20/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) 
digest wrote:

Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of 
them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the 
grades as being somehow more fair. So I think they invite the scrutiny.

I think any individual grade from the student's middle school or high school 
record might be less useful than an aggregate GPA. The 20-30 instructors 
together make an index with considerable predictive power. Not that they 
shouldn't be held accountable also. But it's unlikely that all 20 or so are 
grading too easy or too hard. And no individual instructor has the same 
financial investment in his or her product than the handful of institutions 
making coin from theirs.

That being said, SES, for both grades and test scores, is a problematic 
variable to tease out from merit/ability to succeed in higher education.

Nancy Melucci
Long Beach City College
Long Beach CA
-Original Message-
From: Mike Wiliams
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Sent: Tue, Feb 18, 2014 11:10 pm
Subject: Re:[tips] SAT and High School grade study

These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just

highlight how grades are poorly designed as a measurement device.  What

is their reliability and validity as measures of performance.  Somehow

the college board and SAT makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to

ourselves as grade makers.  The error goes both ways.



Mike Williams



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Re:[tips] Professors We Need You!

2014-02-19 Thread Richard Hake 
Some subscribers to TIPS might be interested in a discussion-list "Re: 
Professors We Need You!" [Hake (2014)]. The abstract reads:

 **

The LrnAsst List's Norman Stahl at  and Nick Voge at 
 have called attention to Nicholas Kristof's NYT Opinion 
piece "Professors, We Need You!" at .

In a subsequent blog entry "Bridging the Moat Around Universities" 
, Kristof:

(a) wrote: "[Professors, We Need You! was] about the unfortunate way America 
has marginalized university professors – and, perhaps sadder still, the way 
they have marginalized themselves from public debate";

(b) posted 313 comments (as of 19 Feb 2014 09:04-0800) on his opinion piece, 
about equally divided between approval and disapproval.

One of more substantive comments is by Aaron Barlow, faculty editor of the AAUP 
magazine "Academe," who pointed to "Public Intellectuals and the AAUP" 
(Schrecker at , and "The Case for Academics as Public 
Intellectuals" (Behm, Rankins-Robertson, & Roen (BRR) at 
. (BRR + commentors on BRR + myself) list about 40 
academicians who have "bridged the moat around universities."

But the fact that 40 [out of a total of over a million higher-education 
faculty] have "bridged the moat" does not negate Kristof's general claim that 
"[professors] have marginalized themselves."

**

 To access the complete 61 kB post please click on .

 

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University; Honorary 
Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands; President, PEdants for 
Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet 
(PEDARRII); LINKS TO: Academia ; Articles 
; Blog ; Facebook 
; GooglePlus ; Google Scholar 
; Linked In ; Research Gate 
; Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs 
; Twitter .

 

REFERENCES [URLs shortened by . The abstract and link to the complete post 
are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are on my blog 
"Hake'sEdStuff" at .

 

 

 
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RE: [tips] SAT and High School grade study

2014-02-19 Thread Jim Clark 
Hi

In addition to problem with grades as predictor, important to remember that 
grades and graduation serve as the dependent variable in most of these studies. 
 There are many problems at this end as well, given wide variability in 
difficulty of different courses and programs, for example. Is it the case that 
students not submitting GREs are taking as difficult courses as those 
submitting GREs.  A small difference was reported in that direction comparing 
science to non-science (slightly more non-submitters in latter), but that does 
not exhaust dimensions of difficulty.

It would be interesting to see grades in the same courses for submitters and 
non-submitters, as well as correlations between grades in single course and HS 
GPA and GREs.

Take care
Jim

Jim Clark
Professor & Chair of Psychology
204-786-9757
4L41A

From: drnanjo [mailto:drna...@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 11:35 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study







Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of 
them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the 
grades as being somehow more fair. So I think they invite the scrutiny.

I think any individual grade from the student's middle school or high school 
record might be less useful than an aggregate GPA. The 20-30 instructors 
together make an index with considerable predictive power. Not that they 
shouldn't be held accountable also. But it's unlikely that all 20 or so are 
grading too easy or too hard. And no individual instructor has the same 
financial investment in his or her product than the handful of institutions 
making coin from theirs.

That being said, SES, for both grades and test scores, is a problematic 
variable to tease out from merit/ability to succeed in higher education.

Nancy Melucci
Long Beach City College
Long Beach CA
-Original Message-
From: Mike Wiliams 
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) 
Sent: Tue, Feb 18, 2014 11:10 pm
Subject: Re:[tips] SAT and High School grade study

These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just

highlight how grades are poorly designed as a measurement device.  What

is their reliability and validity as measures of performance.  Somehow

the college board and SAT makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to

ourselves as grade makers.  The error goes both ways.



Mike Williams



On 2/19/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)

digest wrote:

> Re: SAT and High School grade study





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Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study

2014-02-19 Thread drnanjo 

Assessment companies and the test prep companies that live symbiotically off of 
them make a great deal of money. The test score is held up and apart from the 
grades as being somehow more fair. So I think they invite the scrutiny.

I think any individual grade from the student's middle school or high school 
record might be less useful than an aggregate GPA. The 20-30 instructors 
together make an index with considerable predictive power. Not that they 
shouldn't be held accountable also. But it's unlikely that all 20 or so are 
grading too easy or too hard. And no individual instructor has the same 
financial investment in his or her product than the handful of institutions 
making coin from theirs.

That being said, SES, for both grades and test scores, is a problematic 
variable to tease out from merit/ability to succeed in higher education.

Nancy Melucci
Long Beach City College
Long Beach CA


-Original Message-
From: Mike Wiliams 
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) 
Sent: Tue, Feb 18, 2014 11:10 pm
Subject: Re:[tips] SAT and High School grade study


These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just 
highlight how grades are poorly designed as a measurement device.  What 
is their reliability and validity as measures of performance.  Somehow 
the college board and SAT makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to 
ourselves as grade makers.  The error goes both ways.

Mike Williams

On 2/19/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) 
digest wrote:
> Re: SAT and High School grade study


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Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study

2014-02-19 Thread John Kulig 

Oops .. max = square root (cross products of the _reliabilities_ of the two 
variables) .,. just wasted by daily quota with a typo! 

== 
John W. Kulig, Ph.D. 
Professor of Psychology 
Coordinator, Psychology Honors 
Plymouth State University 
Plymouth NH 03264 
== 

- Original Message -

From: "John Kulig"  
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 
 
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 8:46:32 AM 
Subject: Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study 











Well, grades are not perfect measurement devices, but what is in psychology? 
Interestingly, less than perfect reliability of any otwo variables limits the 
extent the two variables can correlate. Measurement texts give the upper limit, 
or maximum, of validity coefficients (as, say, SAT predicting college grades) 
as square root (cross products of the two variables). So if HS grades have 
reliability of .9 and college grades have a reliability of .6, max correlation 
between the two variables = sqrt(.54) = .73. That's _maximum_. So raw validity 
coefficients usually underestimate validity of the predictor variable ... same 
is true when we try to predict college grades from HS grades. This makes the 
correlations in Stuart's reference even more impressive. 

== 
John W. Kulig, Ph.D. 
Professor of Psychology 
Coordinator, Psychology Honors 
Plymouth State University 
Plymouth NH 03264 
== 

- Original Message -

From: "Christopher Green"  
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 
 
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 8:22:53 AM 
Subject: Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study 

Grades aren't designed to predict how well one will do at the next level. They 
are designed to summarize (impossibly) in a single character (or two) how one 
performed at the last level. The determinants of high school and college 
performance are not exactly the same, so, not surprisingly, high school grades 
don't predict college performance very exactly. But why are we expecting 
*anything* to predict more than, say, half of the variance in college 
performance? We have very little in the rest of psychology that predicts more 
than half of any cognitively and behaviorally complex performance. 

Chris 
... 
Christopher D Green 
Department of Psychology 
York University 
Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 

chri...@yorku.ca 
http://www.yorku.ca/christo 

> On Feb 19, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Mike Wiliams  wrote: 
> 
> These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just highlight how 
> grades are poorly designed as a measurement device. What is their reliability 
> and validity as measures of performance. Somehow the college board and SAT 
> makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to ourselves as grade makers. The 
> error goes both ways. 
> 
> Mike Williams 
> 
>> On 2/19/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest 
>> wrote: 
>> Re: SAT and High School grade study 
> 
> 
> --- 
> You are currently subscribed to tips as: chri...@yorku.ca. 
> To unsubscribe click here: 
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Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study

2014-02-19 Thread John Kulig 

Well, grades are not perfect measurement devices, but what is in psychology? 
Interestingly, less than perfect reliability of any otwo variables limits the 
extent the two variables can correlate. Measurement texts give the upper limit, 
or maximum, of validity coefficients (as, say, SAT predicting college grades) 
as square root (cross products of the two variables). So if HS grades have 
reliability of .9 and college grades have a reliability of .6, max correlation 
between the two variables = sqrt(.54) = .73. That's _maximum_. So raw validity 
coefficients usually underestimate validity of the predictor variable ... same 
is true when we try to predict college grades from HS grades. This makes the 
correlations in Stuart's reference even more impressive. 

== 
John W. Kulig, Ph.D. 
Professor of Psychology 
Coordinator, Psychology Honors 
Plymouth State University 
Plymouth NH 03264 
== 

- Original Message -

From: "Christopher Green"  
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 
 
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 8:22:53 AM 
Subject: Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study 

Grades aren't designed to predict how well one will do at the next level. They 
are designed to summarize (impossibly) in a single character (or two) how one 
performed at the last level. The determinants of high school and college 
performance are not exactly the same, so, not surprisingly, high school grades 
don't predict college performance very exactly. But why are we expecting 
*anything* to predict more than, say, half of the variance in college 
performance? We have very little in the rest of psychology that predicts more 
than half of any cognitively and behaviorally complex performance. 

Chris 
... 
Christopher D Green 
Department of Psychology 
York University 
Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 

chri...@yorku.ca 
http://www.yorku.ca/christo 

> On Feb 19, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Mike Wiliams  wrote: 
> 
> These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just highlight how 
> grades are poorly designed as a measurement device. What is their reliability 
> and validity as measures of performance. Somehow the college board and SAT 
> makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to ourselves as grade makers. The 
> error goes both ways. 
> 
> Mike Williams 
> 
>> On 2/19/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest 
>> wrote: 
>> Re: SAT and High School grade study 
> 
> 
> --- 
> You are currently subscribed to tips as: chri...@yorku.ca. 
> To unsubscribe click here: 
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>  
> or send a blank email to 
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[tips] Random Thought: I.C.D.B.T.

2014-02-19 Thread Louis Eugene Schmier 
I was developing a special decal that was a play on one of my 
"Schmier's Word For The Day" that I still have hanging over my computer.  It 
never came to pass, for I came up with the idea during what unexpectedly proved 
to be my last semester in the classroom.  I had planned to give it to any 
student who with more than a modicum of hubris proudly pranced around like a 
peacock "I've done my best" or sighed defensively "But, it's the best I can 
do."   The decal was going to read;  I.C.D.B.T.!  Can you guess what the 
initials mean?

Make it a good day

-Louis-


Louis Schmier   
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org   
203 E. Brookwood Pl http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Valdosta, Ga 31602 
(C)  229-630-0821 /\   /\  /\ /\
 /\
  /^\\/  \/   \   /\/\__   
/   \  /   \
 / \/   \_ \/ /   \/ 
/\/  /  \/\  \
   //\/\/ /\\__/__/_/\_\/   
 \_/__\  \
 /\"If you want to climb 
mountains,\ /\
 _ /  \don't practice on mole 
hills" - /   \_


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Re: [tips] SAT and High School grade study

2014-02-19 Thread Christopher Green 
Grades aren't designed to predict how well one will do at the next level. They 
are designed to summarize (impossibly) in a single character (or two) how one 
performed at the last level. The determinants of high school and college 
performance are not exactly the same, so, not surprisingly, high school grades 
don't predict college performance very exactly. But why are we expecting 
*anything* to predict more than, say, half of the variance in college 
performance? We have very little in the rest of psychology that predicts more 
than half of any cognitively and behaviorally complex performance. 

Chris
...
Christopher D Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M6C 1G4

chri...@yorku.ca
http://www.yorku.ca/christo

> On Feb 19, 2014, at 2:09 AM, Mike Wiliams  wrote:
> 
> These studies of SAT and grades as predictors or criterion just highlight how 
> grades are poorly designed as a measurement device.  What is their 
> reliability and validity as measures of performance.  Somehow the college 
> board and SAT makers get the scrutiny that we don't apply to ourselves as 
> grade makers.  The error goes both ways.
> 
> Mike Williams
> 
>> On 2/19/14 12:00 AM, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) digest 
>> wrote:
>> Re: SAT and High School grade study
> 
> 
> ---
> You are currently subscribed to tips as: chri...@yorku.ca.
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