The Class is Half Empty

When governments quote a statistic - for example, 77% of the province's students passed Ontario's grade 11 Literacy Test - most people accept the statistic at face value. But, as this paper points out, a great many low-performing students have already dropped out by grade 11. And, because the vast majority of these drop-outs would have failed the Ontario Literacy Test, the true percentage of successful students is likely sixty-something percent.

(Full disclosure - the linked-to paper is primarily making the point that, because the majority of drop-outs are disadvantaged students, existing assessment techniques tend to understate the extent of socio-economic disparity, but I have chosen to use their argument to also point out that existing assessment techinques tend to overstate the extent of student success. 

For the sake of argument, let us postulate that the true perentage of successful students on the Ontario Literacy Test is 67%. I now invite you to take a look at some sample test questions. Of course we have no way of knowing how well students have to perform in order to pass this test, and so we can't be sure how literate one needs to be in order to pass it. Even so, it seems to me that it should be possible for Ontario to prepare more than two-thirds of its students well enough to pass this test.  H/T TB

Comments