The Great AP Score Recalibration

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-09-25 11:27:53 | Updated at 2024-09-30 21:33:22 5 days ago

The Great AP Score Recalibration
James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 25, 2024 | Richard Phelps

Posted on 09/25/2024 3:57:11 AM PDT by karpov

Average course grades tend to be lower in some college subjects than others. Engineering and the “hard” sciences, for example, retain reputations for being “harder” subjects than the humanities and social sciences, even though a naïve observer could just as well assume that students in the latter subjects are smarter.

Do score-average comparisons really matter, though, in practical terms? After college, most graduates will be compared to one another from within their chosen fields. A “C+” engineering graduate will still be chosen ahead of a “C-” engineering graduate, just as an “A+” history grad will be chosen ahead of an “A-” history grad.

Score scales rank individuals’ performances so that they may be compared to one another. There are no “true” test scores; all are relative and at least somewhat subjective. So long as test content and test-taking populations remain similar, test makers can “equate” scores across time, producing the trend lines so popular with journalists and politicians.

Occasionally, however, changes in either the test content or the test-taking population stretch or compress score distributions so much that the scales themselves must be adjusted to remain usefully discriminating. Older readers may remember when the SAT score scales were “re-centered” in 1995-96. College Board, the SAT’s maker, explained that the scales needed to be adjusted because the test-taking population had changed so dramatically—in sheer number and demographic make-up—since the 1940s, when test-takers were predominantly middle- and upper-class white males applying to elite colleges.

A less publicized goal of the recentering synchronized the verbal and math score distributions. Over time, the SAT’s math and verbal scales had developed quite different shapes, and College Board worried that that lack of symmetry threatened the SAT’s face validity among its vast non-technical customer base.

(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...

TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college; collegeboard

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1 posted on 09/25/2024 3:57:11 AM PDT by karpov

To: karpov

The basic concept seems to be that test takers today do not do nearly as well as test takers from a few decades ago.

Should we ask questions about our education system and why it churns out low achievers?
Should we ask questions about today’s parenting and why kids don’t seem studious and disciplined?
Should we ask questions about demographics and the bell curve?

Or should we “re-center” the tests to hide the fact that our nation is in decline?

2 posted on 09/25/2024 4:15:51 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (My decisions about people are based almost entirely on skin color. I learned this from Democrats.)

To: karpov

“ Engineering and the “hard” sciences, for example, retain reputations for being “harder” subjects than the humanities and social sciences, even though a naïve observer could just as well assume that students in the latter subjects are smarter.”

Reputation for being harder and harder is put in scare quotes lol

Was this written by a butt hurt “journalist “ major. I majored in engineering, and it is harder than the “studies”.

Although I would surely have got an F in DEI class by prof 😂

3 posted on 09/25/2024 4:26:44 AM PDT by blitz128

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