School of Education

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Browsing School of Education by Subject "Achievement tests"

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    In the context of Trinidad and Tobago, How do we identify schools that are succeeding or failing amidst exceptionally challenging circumstances?
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) De Lisle, Jerome; Smith, Peter; Lewis, Yvonne; Keller, Carol; Mc David, Patricia; Jules, Vena; Lochan, Samuel; Hackett, Raymond S.; Pierre, Phaedra N.; Seunarinesingh, Krishna
    The understanding that some schools face uniquely challenging circumstances represents a groundswell of new research in school improvement and education reform policy. Traditional school improvement theory does not account for variations in school contexts, and some have questioned the applicability of current practice to all schools, especially those in disadvantaged contexts. This leads directly to the core question of this paper: In the context of Trinidad and Tobago, how do we identify schools facing challenge? Answering this question will allow us to address the edifice of inequity strangling schooling outcomes in Latin America and the Caribbean. A critical task is the development of a database of schools with characteristics related to performance and context. This paper describes the protocol and initial data from such a project. Data came from the 2005 and 2006 primary school national achievement tests. A simple measure of school performance, called the Academic Performance Index, was developed, based on the distribution of students in each performance level defined in the national achievement tests. Additional indices were obtained, including disadvantage status and school size. From the database, a short list of high- and low-achieving schools in challenging circumstances was developed
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    Validating the performance standards in the 2005 and 2006 national primary school achievement tests in Mathematics and Language Arts
    (School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) De Lisle, Jerome
    Performance standards are informed expectations of student achievement levels in a population. These expectations are based on knowledge or skills in the curriculum (content standards) or on the content and demands of test items. Arguably, performance standards for national assessments of educational achievement are required to evaluate quality and equity within an education system. In 2005, performance standards were introduced into the reporting system for the Trinidad and Tobago primary school national assessments. The critical question was the meaningfulness and usefulness of these performance standards; an issue that relates to validity. Validation considers the legitimacy and defensibility of procedures. Evidence for the validity of standards may come from three different sources: procedural, internal, and external. This paper analysed these three sources of validity evidence for the performance standards established in the 2005 and 2006 national assessments. Following recent trends, the study makes significant use of qualitative data obtained from the judges in evaluating the cognitive processes and perceptions associated with judging and setting standards in situ. This type of data was obtained from journals and responses to open-ended questions in a questionnaire administered to participants during the standard-setting process. The 2005 data suggest that while some evidence was strongly supportive of procedural validity, problems in logistics and management of the process proved noteworthy limitations. Targets of improvement for future standard-setting exercises should focus on addressing these deficiencies. Additionally, future evaluations of the process should include additional quantitative information necessary to judge the internal and external validity