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Re: [Phys-l] A challenge.

I share your concern that the questions might simply be reinforcing our definitions of who is "smart" and who is "dumb". However, I have had many personal experiences with questions I have written for exams where the brighter students focus on a sublety in the wording of the question and actually answer a far more complicated question and get the original wrong. The average student just blinly "plugs and chugs" and either gets it correct or gets lots of partial credit.

It is an art to making good questions that gauge understanding and I find it hard to fault the testing services for looking for consistency.

Bob at PC

________________________________________
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of Dan Crowe [Dan.Crowe@Loudoun.K12.VA.US]
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 9:24 PM
To: phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] A challenge.

Is anyone else bothered by the policy that reinforces the "smart" vs. "dumb" kids scores? I can imagine that there are valid questions that otherwise higher-scoring students miss more frequently that otherwise lower-scoring students. If such questions exist, then systematically rejecting such questions reduces the validity of the entire test.

Daniel Crowe
Loudoun County Public Schools
Academy of Science
dan.crowe@loudoun.k12.va.us
Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com> 11/26/09 11:35 PM >>>
Posted on PTSOS by Dean Baird:

The process by which an item makes it on to the CST is ... involved.
Add a few more steps for those that get released.

Items are developed by ETS and screened by the California Department
of Education and by its Assessment Review Panel. If that all goes
well, the item is field-tested. The item must perform well on a
series of psychometric measures. Most importantly, the item must be
neither too easy nor too hard, based on student performance on the
item. And the item must discriminate well. That is, students who
perform well on the test overall should perform well on the item. And
students who don't perform well on the test overall should perform
poorly on the item. There are always some items that "smart" kids get
wrong and "dumb" kids get right. Those items are rejected.

<snip>
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