Learning Activities

Data Manipulation: Here is some data and questions for you to answer as you analyze it.
Helping Parents to Understand Standardized Testing: As part of your discussion post, write some key ideas you would share with parents about standardized testing. Assume the parents have little to no experience with standardized tests. What would you tell them about why standardized tests are used, key concepts they need in order to understand their children's scores, how you will use the data, problems with testing.


Standardized Test Concepts

http://www.hishelpinschool.com/testing/test4.html



http://quizlet.com/_652tu


Statistics Overview (or Review): Videos

Intro to Statistics



Normal Distribution



Mean, Median, and Mode



Introduction to Probability



Standard Deviation



Percentiles



Percentiles Part 2



Z-Scores



Interpreting Standardized Test Data

http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=1&n=10


Data Manipulation Practice

Here is some standardized test data that should be interesting to you; this is a collection of Praxis II PLT scores from some Capital students a number of years ago.

PLT Grades 7-12:
191,188,186,185,184,182,181,180,179,178,177,176,175,173,172,170,169,168,167,164,163,153,152,137,186,185,185,182,181,180,180,178,178,177,177,177,176,176,175,175,175,170,169,169,167,163,152,157,159,160,162,164,165,165,165,165,165,166,167,167,167,168,168,168,169,169,169,169,170,170,171,171,174,174,174,175,175,176,178,179,179,180,180,180,186,187,187,191

PLT Early Childhood:
163,166,174,175,175,177,178,178,178,179,180,181,181,181,182,183,184,184,185,187,188,190,191,191,192,193,196,200,164,166,167,170,170,170,174,177,179,181,181,184,185,185,185,188,188,188,189,190,190,191,191,192,192,192,192,193,194,196,197,199,200,200

Use the following tool:
http://www.easycalculation.com/statistics/statistics.php

You can copy and paste each set of scores into this calculator and get a quick answer.

For each group, find:
Mean (Average)
Median
Mode
Standardized Deviation

What implications does this data have for a person who is teaching Educational Psychology?

Critique of Standardized Testing and Tests

Here is a source of information that question the value of standardized tests. This is offered because you likely have heard so many reasons that we need standardized tests that learning about the problems with standardized tests will hopefully be refreshing and different.

http://www.fairtest.org/k-12/high%20stakes