An article in today's local paper spoke results for NC math students on PISA, an international exam sponsored by OECD. PISA stands for Program for International Student Assessment and OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The test was administered in 2015.
Massachusetts and North Carolina were the only two states with enough participants to allow statistically significant comparisons. Apparently, MA was far above average compared to the rest of the US while NC was about average. Disappointing but not surprising.
Anyway, the released items for the 2012 test are attached as a PDF file. The test focuses on practical applications that use relatively elementary math principles. There are a few problems that surveyors can relate to, some involving areas and perimeters of odd shapes and a few others. Maybe fellow math nerds will enjoy looking at them.
I think it's a pretty good test of reasoning mathematically. The questions require complete thinking, so don't rush, or your will be a Panther instead of a Patriot.
Thanks
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What is the target grade level of this exercise?
MathTeacher, post: 408120, member: 7674 wrote: I think it's a pretty good test of reasoning mathematically
I looked at a few of them and thought they were excellent questions. Very real-world applications of mathematical concepts and simple calculations. I was a bit annoyed by a question that has multiple parts and gives no credit if any part is answered wrong.
[USER=378]@Robert Hill[/USER] Here's a web site with faq:
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/faq.asp
Hera's a copy and paste from that site:
To provide valid estimates of student achievement and characteristics, PISA selects a sample of students that represents the full population of 15-year-old students in each participating country or education system. This population is defined internationally as 15-year-olds (15 years and 3 months to 16 years and 2 months at the beginning of the testing period) attending both public and private schools in grades 7-12. Each country or education system submits a sampling frame to the international consortium of organizations responsible for the implementation of PISA. The OECD's international sampling contractor then validates each country or education system's sampling frame.
Bill93, post: 408123, member: 87 wrote: I was a bit annoyed by a question that has multiple parts and gives no credit if any part is answered wrong.
On the other hand, Question 1 on the Ice Cream Parlor gives partial credit for answers that are seriously wrong. It's a dilemma that I fought with every time I graded a test.
In my opinion, College Board Advanced Placement tests give credit as fairly as possible. On their free response problems, stages of completion are credited. To counter that, a department head at the community college where I taught gave no partial credit ever. His argument was that, with partial credit, an engineering student could graduate without ever having solved a single engineering problem correctly.
It is virtually certain that scorers of these tests had many intense discussions about what got credit and what didn't in spite of the scoring rubric. They know what's fair and they will argue to their last breath to get it. Oddball that I am, I gave much credit to trial-and-error solutions. There's a ton of understanding that goes into using that technique successfully and I gave students credit for the thinking.
MathTeacher, post: 408126, member: 7674 wrote: student could graduate without ever having solved a single engineering problem correctly
If the staffing workload permitted, I'd say no student should pass a course until they work all the assignments correctly, and their score would depend on the first try and/or number of tries. I know that's impractical.
That would be good. When we set a passing score at 70 (60 is common today), we're implicitly saying that a student who knows 70% of the curriculum barely passes. An average of 77 is a C in most public schools, so 77% mastery of the curriculum is labeled average.
GPA is about the only objective measure for separating those who know from those who know a little. And when one professor grades more leniently than another, then GPA is suspect, too.
