[Fwd: [Fwd: Grade equivalent scores and more.]]

[Julie Woestehoff <pureparents@PUREPARENTS.ORG>]

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• To: pureparents@pureparents.org, Ekbsiegel@aol.com, mneillft@aol.com, ZOHAGIN@clccrul.org, raelynnet@aol.com, mrogers@cleweb.org, LLeBreton@aol.com, jsimmons@igc.org, dfc1@aol.com, lea@crosscity.org, mrhanson9@hotmail.com, ARN-L@listsrva.CUA.EDU
• Subject: Re: [Fwd: Grade equivalent scores and more.]
• From: "Matthew Hanson" <mrhanson9@hotmail.com>
• Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 18:45:08 GMT

thanks for sending this along, julie. very interesting.

also, for those of you haven't yet read these, see also (a) the Sun Times
(5/25/00) article, "Margin of error in Iowa Tests raises red flags," and (b)
the Consortium's 1998 report, "Academic Productivity of Chicago Public
Elementary Schools." The latter raises the point that in addition to being
poor indicators of individual student achievement, Grade Equivelent scores
(GEs) are not appropriate for measuring changes in GROUP performance OVER
TIME. Specifically, in the section of the report called "The Non-Equivalence
of Grade Equivalence (p. 7)," the authors state, "Since all of the (ITBS)
test forms...produce GEs, the lay user might easily think that these results
are equivalent and directly comparable. In fact, this is not true."

To be brief, the Consortium report points out that the ITBS is administered
in different Forms (e.g., Form K in 1993, Form L in '94) each year and
depending on students' grade, different Levels (e.g., Level 9 for Grade 3,
Level 12 for Grade 6). Due to differences in the way GEs are computed for a
given Form and/or Level, they cannot be, as the Consortium report states,
"strictly compared." The authors then go on to say, "Clearly, this limits
our ability to make accurate statements about how much actual learning an
individual student is making over time. It also introduces a great deal of
uncertainty into any assessment of whether scores may be going up or down
over time for an individual SCHOOL or across the WHOLE SYSTEM. While real
changes in student performance are embedded here, so are the differences in
the test scoring" (p.8, CAPS added for emphasis).

For those of you who may not be familiar with the 1998 Consortium report,
the problems associated with GEs such as those noted above were at the heart
of their argument for devising a reporting metric that was more appropriate
for accurately assessing school "productivity" (i.e., improvements in
student learning over time). To the best of my understanding, the
recommendations made by the Consortium to create a score metric that took
into account differences in year-to-year content of the tests (aka
content-referenced metric) and thus, could be used as the basis for
comparing results across time, were never picked up by CPS because the
metric itself (let alone the ways it was calculated) was not considered
accessible to most of those who would have to interpret and use them
(parents, teachers, school administrators, etc.). In contrast, the GE, as
flawed as it is, provides an index of student achievement in developmental
terms that are easily understood by these groups.

I'm certain that there is more to this story. Anyone???

matthew

From: Julie Woestehoff <pureparents@pureparents.org>
To: Elaine Siegel <Ekbsiegel@aol.com>, Monty Neill <mneillft@aol.com>,
"Zarina O'Hagin" <ZOHAGIN@clccrul.org>, RaeLynne Toperoff
<raelynnet@aol.com>, Margot Rogers <mrogers@cleweb.org>,
Laurie LeBreton <LLeBreton@aol.com>, John Simmons <jsimmons@igc.org>,
Valencia Rias <dfc1@aol.com>, Lauren Allen <lea@crosscity.org>,
Matthew Hanson <mrhanson9@hotmail.com>, Assessment Reform Network
<ARN-L@listsrva.CUA.EDU>
Subject: [Fwd: Grade equivalent scores and more.]
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 12:13:57 -0500

HI Friends- I had to share the following message from my Dad who is a
retired education professor (at the time of this story, at University of
Chicago, then U of Rochester). We have not yet learned from history and
are condemning our children to repeat it. Julie Woestehoff
<< message3.txt >>

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