Re: [Phys-l] NAEP scores are higher for students who took PHYSICS

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Did the state cherry pick the students?  Who is the "they" that selected the
students and how were they selected?  How many were selected?

Often when students are selected for research the report will just say "a
Midwestern school" to preserve the identities of the students.  But the
criteria for selection should be spelled out so you can be confident that
the sample is valid.  I would suspect somewhere in the reports there is
information about how students are selected, and I would assume it has to be
on a school wide basis or else it will be difficult to get students to take
the test.  If only some take it then parents might object.  Also if only
some take it, it would be difficult to penalize students who are kept home
to avoid the test, or to force them to make it up.  Student confidentiality
is important so if they only take 10 or fewer students from each school,
they would have to disguise the individual school scores.  Actually
releasing school scores could possibly be construed as violating
confidentiality because all students from that school might be considered
dumb when the average is low.

My son as part of an auto shop class in HS took the ASVAB.  He claimed that
most of them drew Christmas trees or answered randomly.  He actually got a
high score.  He also claimed to have done the same thing on the proposed
state test (no penalty) and passed it.  So another question is "how do you
get them to take it seriously when it does not have some penalty or
benefit?".  Actually I suspect my son may have answered questions he thought
were interesting until he got bored and then randomized the rest.  I wonder
what his score might have been if he had tried to answer all questions?  He
will graduate this June possibly cum laude with an engineering degree.

This sounds like a possible problem to me!

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> I repeat my question from last week... where can I find a list of schools
> which have their students take  the NAEP?  or the PISA or the TIMMS for
> that matter  ???      No one I have asked in the education field in this
> entire area of South Jersey knows of any school where the science students
> take any of these tests.   The State report states that they *chose*
> several hundred selected students from several schools to take the TIMMS,
> but the neither the State website nor any of the testing web sites give a
> list of districts anywhere where their test was administered.
>
> Marty