Issue: EDUCATION 2020: Broaden scope in analysing schools' value added at CSEC
Published:Saturday | March 29, 2014 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:The value a school adds to its students is a significant concern for many Jamaicans - from the minister of education whose mandate it is to ensure that our schools are providing the nation's children with the best possible education, right down to the precocious fifth-grade student who has his/her eyes set on a high school even before s/he has entered the dreaded year of the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT).
The Gleaner must be applauded for attempting to concretise this nebulous concept of a school's value added by using real data - and, in particular, numbers that we, the general public, can readily understand. However, the method-ology (calculating comparative value-added scores by taking a school's incoming GSAT ranking and subtracting it from its Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate [CSEC] quality score ranking) is perhaps too superficial to be as meaningful as it could - and should - be.
For instance, we can compare two schools like Waterford High and St Catherine High, which rank closely (38th and 39th, respectively) in the CSEC Quality Score rankings for math. However, Waterford High's comparative value-added score for math is an impressive +97 and St Catherine High's is zero. The inspiringly earnest and innovative efforts of math teachers at Waterford High should certainly be celebrated - and emulated. However, though it is quite possible that the teachers at St Catherine High are putting in as much work to ensure their students do well in math at the CSEC level, the wide disparity in the comparative value-added scores of Waterford High and St Catherine High belies that possibility and tells the tale of a school that adds no value to its students in math.
OTHER MEASURES
More meaningful, value-added measures should be less comparative in nature and should occur within the context of any one school. For instance, one can compare the average GSAT math score of students attending a certain high school with the average CSEC math score of students attending that same high school. Or one can create a statistical model that can predict future CSEC scores from a student's GSAT scores, and then compare their actual scores to these predicted scores.
'The CSEC Grade' is an excellent feature that provides fascinating insight for educators like myself and for the general public. I hope that, in next year's feature, The Gleaner will build on this initial attempt to provide concrete, value-added scores by delving even deeper.
HARVEY A. MILLER JR