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Knowledge and Judgment

 

Accurate, Honest, and Fair Scoring
Classroom, Standardized Testing, and Workplace

Email rahart@multiplechoicescoring.org

 

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How Can I Lead Students to Success?

 

Newspaper and radio stories from Minnesota indicate that education officials are at a loss for improving Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) scores. Minnesota is not unique.

 

Some blame and bully the students. Others integrate the test into the school culture by challenging a neighboring school and holding pre-test school pep rallies.

 

You cannot tell serious from non-serious students by only looking at their MCA scores. The root of the problem is more in leadership to produce high quality students and the use of out of date scoring tools than how serious the students are.

 

The scoring rules are different for the MCA. The objective is not to field a team of stars selected from the school by the coach. Now the school is the team. Stars earn honor points for coaching low performing students.  Winning is not the highest score but the highest percentage of players who pass the test.

 

Several student attitudes need changing. Administrators must create loyalty in team members to a bureaucracy that has failed part of the team academically and to which many are alienated to the point they wish to drop out of school completely.

 

Other students see the MCA as the one day they have the power to strike back and “Christmas tree” or bubble in the answer sheet without even looking at the test.

 

Many of the students who did not complete questions on the MCA may have just been honest. They marked what they knew and moved on.

 

Only passing counts. And 75% is too high. If you don’t expect to pass, why worry?

 

A lucky mark is as good as knowing the answer with an out of date scoring tool like right mark scoring (only counting the right marks).

 

 

  1. A student knows 50% of the answers. The remaining are marked by chance.
  2. The test score is 67% (1/3 wrong) and the quality score is 67%.
  3. There is no way to know which right marks represent right answers the student knows and can trust.
  4. Another student also knows and marks 50% of the answers. She then stops.
  5. The tests score is 67% (no wrong) and the quality score is 100%.
  6. Right marks represent right answers the student knows and can trust.
  7. Knowledge and Judgment Scoring tells us what we need to know from a test.
  8. Right mark scoring only ranks a student by the test score (over a range)
  9. The right mark score could be anything from 55% to 75% at random.
  10. The Knowledge and Judgment Score is 67% every time for this set of answers.
  11. A set of answers worth 75% (passing) yields 75% every time and not half the time with right mark scoring.

 

Traditional right mark scoring turns the MCA and practice tests into faulty assessment tools by inserting chance (gambling) into the scoring rather than assessing student judgment that is measured in Knowledge and Judgment Scoring.

 

Omitting is acceptable in Knowledge and Judgment Scoring. It permits students to be in charge of reporting what they know rather than marking a test and waiting for the count of right marks.

 

Knowledge and Judgment Scoring does not provide a more accurate basis for sorting out serious and non-serious students but produces high quality students with positive attitudes. They are serious students. This is one solution to low MCA scores.

 

The conversion of passive pupils into self-correcting scholars goes through several stages. It may take a month to over a year.

 

Student comments:

 

  1. Changing from you telling me what I marked right to me telling you what I know is scary.
  2. Marking fewer questions did not get me a higher score.
  3. Fully knowing about a few things is worth more than knowing a little bit about a lot of stuff.
  4. I know what I know and I know how to learn more (question, relate and verify).
  5. I can do this. I can answer test questions I have not seen before.

 

[Essays, short answer tests, reports and projects can also be Knowledge and Judgment Scored using rubrics.]

 

What is needed is leadership to produce high quality students. Encouraging students to study harder, using poor study habits, is not a productive way to prepare for the MCA.

 

For students, learning to accurately report what you know and can trust and knowing how to learn are keys to your success and to high MCA scores. Marking only what you know and omitting the rest makes a more honest and meaningful protest than just bubbling in an answer for each question.

 

Knowledge and Judgment Scoring allows competing schools to be judged by both quantity and quality: the score and something about how they got that score.

 

28 March 2008