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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (51553)	6/20/2002 1:54:58 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Keep in mind as we work through this that I am generally an anti-social comparison (norm referent) person. Either you did some reading up in statistics or you are not as ignorant about this subject as you first claimed. You are correct about the problems with a small sample. You are not correct in stating that you can't establish a normal curve in a population that is fairly homogenaious (like gifted students). You simply have to norm your statistics on this population not the general population. A small sample can be normed but you have to take into consideration the skewing of the results and interpret it properly. As with most things context is everything. The statistic with out a good interpretation does more harm than good. I remember a school district that published their results in the news paper showing that their district was in the 67%ile nationally. They spent all summer back peddling on that. I want to comment on your second paragraph but have to do some errands. So I will try to get to it later.

To: Neocon who wrote (51553)	6/20/2002 4:04:16 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"So, how do we derive our expectations of performance?" Earlier in the week I pointed out that there are two methods in which to derive such expectations. One is the norm referenced, which is the A to F grading, when those grades are used to compare participant performance and achievement. The other method is criterian referenced. This method sets criterian for mastery and goals for achieving some or all of the criterian. As you master the criterian you move closer to the goal and satisfactorily mastering all or most of the criterian would be measured as excellent work where as making little effort to complete even a few would result in being measued as failure. These two methods are often juxtaposed and entertwined as normed reference does create a competitive atmosphere and so has some motivational benefits. Also some times levels of mastery have been normed accross the population so that once one has mastered a certain number of the criteria, we know that he is above average (compared to the norm). The benefits of norm referencing (social comparison) are short term and should never be held up as long term requirements for performance. If you win the world title, you will eventually lose it. Therefore, should you just lay down once winning it because you are now on the fateful road to becomming a "loser?" The recommended formula for most learning environments is 10 to 20% competitive with the rest being cooperative and individual efforts toward mastery that is not based on social comparison. So, what does this have to do with grades? Where grades are used as a social comparison (who is admitted to the university) we should be able to compare each individual grade to the norm standard. Where the grade is being used only to measure mastery of individual goals in a special situation then there is no need to have them associated with any norm standard. A responsible teacher knows how the grade will be used (norm reference, individual mastery, or both) and provides the correct label A,B,C,D,F with the interpretation of its meaning. An irresponsible teacher provides a B to the student who has "won their heart" even though the "B" represents high achievement on a normed standard and the knowledge base of the student does not represent above average. Finally context is everything but is nothing without interpretation.

To: Neocon who wrote (51553)	6/20/2002 4:21:36 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Human interest: There was a sophomore in high school back in 1987 who would come in at lunch time and play chess with me when I was a teacher. I figured he didn't have friends his own age and I enjoyed the challenge, since he was pretty good. He always had one of those 700 page sci-fi novels next to him. It seemed like he had a new one every time I saw him. I flipped through one and noticed that the technical vocab was above my head. We had gotten our first computer lab a couple of years earlier and I had seen him in the computer lab after school, once in a while, designing fantasy games. I learned one day that this kid was being tested to be considered for placement in the Special Ed program. I asked the evaluators why. They told me he was taking freshmen English for the second time because he did not meet the freshman requirements. He did not read "Tale of Two Cities" or turn in home work. His grade point average was a D- and he was only passing courses where the standard was so low that you just had to show up to get a passing grade. I asked the kid what he was interested in. He slopped hogs on a farm after school and that was all he cared about. I struggled with this for a long time but eventually adjusted to the fact that this kid would never be motivated toward academic achievement in our high school. He kicked butt on the special ed eval btw.