On July 29, Dr. Barry Fullerton, Vice Chancellor for the Georgia Board of Regents, made a presentation to the Georgia House Education Committee in which he discussed the Board's method for establishing the criteria for admitting homeschoolers to the University System of Georgia. Dr. Fullerton gave a sketchy description of the Angoff Method. It is described in more detail in the ETS report, along with the ETS recommended "cut scores".
Dr. Fullerton was asked a number of questions by the Education Committee members about the validity of trying to establish SAT II scores that were "equivalent" to a "C" in the associated college prep curriculum course. His answers indicated that it was not valid to do so, that they did not know what the "C equivalent" scores were, that ETS was working on it, and that they expected to get the results from ETS soon. He also indicated in his comments to the Committee that his recommendation to the Board for a "passing score" would be based on the ETS recommendation, less one standard error. Assuming that he was referring to the standard error reported by the College Board in the 1996-97 "Admission Staff Handbook for the SAT Program", the percentiles corresponding to his recommendation can be computed, and are shown in Table 1.
| Writing | 550 550 |
42 42 |
510 510 |
29 29 |
| American History | 590 590 |
49 49 |
560 560 |
40 40 |
| Math IC | 550 510 |
39 25 |
520 480 |
29 17 |
| Biology | 510 460 |
20 9 |
480 430 |
12 6 |
| Chemistry | 570 | 36 | 540 |
26 |
| Physics | 650 | 57 | 620 |
46 |
While the reduction in the passing scores would increase the number of students "passing" these tests, it does not address the fundamental flaws in this method, described in HEIR's Comment on the ETS Report.
This report contributed by Leon McGinnis
Last updated 7/30/97
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