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Re: School Board-letters to colleges



The letters are being sent in response to the scaling of the New York
state Physics Regents exam. The scaling of the raw scores was, and is,
very controversial. In short, students had to correctly answer 68% of
the questions in order to earn a passing grade of 65%. Higher raw
scores were depressed as many as 4-5 points in the scaling (i.e., 79's
became 75's). This scale hurt the majority of the students who either
barely failed, or had indeed, passed, the exam. The exception is the
student who scored 85 out of 85...this student would receive a 100.

The REGENTS explanation is that the harder questions were weighted more
heavily. However, when we score the tests, we simply count up the
number of points earned and convert the raw score to the scaled score
with the use of the chart provided with the exam. Each question on
parts A and B1 (worth 45 of 85 raw score points) were worth one point
REGARDLESS of the level difficulty....and it varied widely. Missing,
say, 5 questions on Parts A and B1 would result in the same scaled score
regardless of WHICH questions were missed. Parts B2 and C required (in
theory) more difficult calculations and /or an extended response and
varied from 1-4 points each. Most were 1-2 points, with partial credit
(integers) allowed for each part of a question answered correctly.

Just to make it clear, there was nothing on the scale itself which
differentiated between hard and easy questions. The regents explanation
just doesn't make any sense to those of us who actually scored the exam.


QUIST, OREN wrote:

This may be a case of a "little knowledge is a bad thing," but that has
never stopped my before.

There was an interesting small article in this morning's Sioux Falls Argus
Leader newspaper. I have already forgotten many of the details, since it
was several hours ago that I read it. My memory half-life is getting
shorter and shorter.

The thrust of the article was that college admissions councilors (in New
York, or New England, or ???) were being asked to overlook the physics score
in some college admissions exam.

It seems that the test scorers had tried to weight more heavily those
physics questions that were seen as harder or more advanced.


We certainly would not want to ask hard questions and perhaps deflate the
students' egos.

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.


This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.