Thursday, August 11, 2011

Do RI, NH & VT have Different NECAP Cut Scores?

One odd thing I noticed about the recent National Center for Educational Statistics report on the varying rigor of different state standards and assessments is that their model estimates that based on NAEP scores New Hampshire and Vermont have somewhat more rigorous assessments than Rhode Island -- despite the fact that all three use the NECAP. They aren't huge differences, but enough that the +/- 2 standard error ranges don't overlap, and putting RI as much as 10 places behind the top NECAP state in ranking.

To be honest, I'm not curious enough about this to try to figure out where to check to see if all three use the same cut scores, but I thought it was worth mentioning if someone else around here knew. That is, it isn't clear to me whether this is showing a bias in their model or an actual difference in how the states apply NECAP scores.

It would be nice if someone tried to do this kind of analysis for high school as well. It is harder though because there is no NAEP past 8th grade.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you guys pronounce it like patella?

Jonathan

Tom Hoffman said...

Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecapping

Jason said...

Same cut scores. The feds sampled schools and so it likely has to do with some artifact of that process.