The Ceiling Effect #2

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Ceiling Effect #2” [Hake (2011)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Sheila Tobias (2010) in a recent APS News “Back Page” editorial “Teachers in the Crosshairs. . .”: wrote:

“In Houston, where a new value-added formula is being used to grade teachers’ skills, ‘N.Y. Times’ education writer Sam Dillon found a high school physics teacher out of the running for high bonuses because, as she reported, ‘My kids come in at a very high level of competence, scoring well before the semester begins.’ After she teaches them for a year, they continue to score well on a state science test but show less measurable ‘gain’ than other classes, so her bonus is small compared with those of other teachers. The teacher has invented a term of her own to characterize this distortion. She calls it the ‘ceiling effect.’ We might call it a saturation effect.”

It's unfortunate that the teacher’s bonus assigners were not aware that it’s the “average normalized gain” [g] = ([%post] – [%pre]) / (100% - [%pre]) [the square brackets [. . .] indicate class averages], often used in physics education research, that can (in some cases) be used as a gauge of relative course effectiveness, NOT the absolute average gain [G] = ([%post] – [%pre]).

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To access the complete 11 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/hUnHZe .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University

Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands

President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)

rrhake@earthlink.net>

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake

http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi

http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com

http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake

REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 12 Jan 2010.]

Hake, R.R. 2011. “The Ceiling Effect #2” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/hUnHZe . Post of 12 Jan 2011 16:19:49-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to various discussion lists.

Tobias, S. 2010. “Teachers in the Crosshairs: The Impact of ‘School Choice,’ ‘Reform,’ and ‘Accountability’,” APS News 20(1), January; online at http://bit.ly/fc6jEj .