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Re: [Phys-L] Evaluation tests



Is this really true? Where is the evidence other than what you believe?
When someone says something is obvious or self evident, I wish to see the
evidence.

As to discouraging students, a physics class taught in a PER based fashion
can be the best way to improve student math ability, so perhaps an
instructor who uses PER should welcome the lower students. I would agree
that a conventional course probably lines up with the math evaluation test.

As to IQ tests, they are NOT an indicator of intelligence, but rather they
were cooked to be an indicator of how well students can do in "conventional"
schools. In either case the correlation is far below 100%. As has been
shown by Feuerstein it is possible to dramatically push up scores on these
tests. A PER based course probably does push up such scores somewhat. It
is obvious to many in school guidance counseling that IQ scores are fixed,
but there are experiments that show completely the opposite. These people
habitually say things like a dyslexic should not be in advanced courses, and
ignore the federal law which grants LD students the right to be in such
courses.

So it is quite possible that denying student entry into a PER based course
is denying them access to exactly the type of course they need. The problem
is that failure can act to traumatize the student, and retard graduation.
Here is a case where real education is at odds with bureaucratic mandates.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Memo #1 from the keen-grasp-of-the-obvious department:

Give them an /algebra/ test. A poor algebra score is a
strong predictor of a poor showing in the algebra-based
physics course.

The converse is not necessarily true, but one-sided information
is better than none.


Students who are weak in algebra should be strongly
discouraged from enrolling in the physics course to begin
with. This is waaaay better than enrolling and then dropping
after it is too late to sign up for something else.