Generous curve helps kids 'pass' algebra regents exam
Dave McKinley, WGRZ
BUFFALO, NY - When New York State rolled out its first regents exam based on the common core in algebra last year, it made no bones about the fact the test would be much harder.
But at the same time, it ensured that large numbers of students would not fail the more challenging test by creating a scoring system so that roughly the same percentage of students would pass the test as in the past.
The state said this was done in order to create "stability" in terms of passing rates.
However, an algebra teacher at a Western New York school wrote to us to say the system aimed at keeping the passing rate from plummeting does so with no regard for how students actually perform
Here's what she's talking about.
When a test is graded, a chart is used to convert the students' actual raw score to the grade they will actually receive – the so called "scale score."
A student who answers 85 out of 86 questions — or 99 percent correctly -- has his or her score automatically dropped to a 98.
This pattern of dropping the scores from the actual percentage of correct answers continues before it evens out for students who get 80 percent of answers correct, and actually get an 80 for a grade.
But any score below that is actually raised, all the way down to where a student who only gets 30 out of 86 questions right -- which is 35 percent to most of us -- gets a grade of 65.
"What this says to me," wrote the teacher, "is to reward the students who didn't try hard all year long and punish the students who strive for perfection. Do we want to support the hard workers or not?"
In response to this, a State Education Department spokesperson told WGRZ-TV that the state uses a process called "equating," the purpose of which is to maintain the level of difficulty of a test from year to year.
According to the spokesperson, equating is a standard process that is followed in every state, almost every year, in every assessment program. Further, equating occurs each year with Regents Exams, where the cut score needed for passing (65) remains the same, but the raw score needed to achieve a cut score of 65 changes from year to year, depending on whether the current year's version of the test is slightly more difficult or slightly easier than it was the prior year.
Why is it so important to ensure the same percentage of students pass as in other years? The answer, in part, has been to make it fair, because those taking these tests haven't been exposed to the common core curriculum for all their years in school.
In fact, the 5th grade students of today will be the first to experience it all the way through.
However, the difficulty of the test, contend some, is totally unfair. And the most recent edition of the algebra regents was by many accounts extremely difficult.
According to numbers provided to Two On Your Side, at one normally high performing Western new York District, only 1.6 percent of students had a scale score of 85 or above, which classifies them as mastering algebra.
But with the scale in place, and the ability to "pass" the test by getting only about one-third of the answers correct, it will still reflect that about 90 percent "passed" the test, which would be historically normal for that district.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by PorkChopSandwiches
