Students Against Scaling - Post Here! (3 Viewers)

[undalay]

Fuck james ruse.

I think they were refering to the OP : )

 

[Phoenix Fury]

I say it is unfair, all the douche-bag fuck-heads drag you down, sounds unfair to me...

 

[tommykins]

I say it is unfair, all the douche-bag fuck-heads drag you down, sounds unfair to me...

learn the system before you talk shit you douchebag fuckhead.

 

[Zedez]

I don't quite follw what he is on about, but I think what is means is that if you score above the 'cap' on a subject your mark is revised down to that 'cap'.

e.g. If you are doing General Math, the cap is say 92, so if you score above that your mark is still 92, not what you actually got. Please correct me if I misread this, because I am a bit lost... And this is because...

That is stupid. What if someone doing Ext. Maths gets 92 (a fairly good mark for that subject) they would score the same as someone who got 92 for General Maths. Hello? Obviously it is harder to get 92 in Ext. than in General! What if someone gets 90 in Ext? They are beaten by someone who got 92 in General, when the first mark is much harder to achieve. You have only taken into account the highest end of the scale, and not even touched on the middle and lower scoring groups of people.

You can definitely make PDHPE and 4 unit maths of equal difficulty... you could take any number of complex things from medicine/physiotherapy

No you can't. For 3 reasons:

1. That is just ridiculous

2. What would happen to all the students who are not capable or simply don't want to study PDHPE at this level? Or any other subject for this matter?

3. How would they be able to learn about medicine/physiotherapy at high school if they haven't done the background/lower level skills first. WHen are they meant to learn what they would have learnt at high school. What would they learn at Uni?

 

[Schoey93]

Don't be so quick to criticise. Have any of you read the article about the UAI being dumped for HSC students from the 2010 HSC year (I doubt it will get through this year despite speculation to the contrary)? The new system will be similar, it is called the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Ranking) and all senior high school students in Australia will be eligible to receive one, with the scaling done by UAC (Universities Admissions Commission) the same for each state and territory. Queensland will keep their OP (Overall Position) system until 2012, or perhaps even later. So ... the highest rank will be 99.95, the lowest is likely to be 'Below 30' ... in other words, 'available upon request'.

My system is not the same as the ATAR. However, for the sake of education speak, let me adopt ATAR as the new name for my proposed system for iniversities admission rankings.


Also, I'm not done yet, LOL.




My system would be linear as some said (and no, it would NOT be 'more shit', thank you very much.) This means marks would follow a curve (not a Belle Curve, that would just be simply ridiculous and hideously American).

The largest possible spread of marks in any Higher School Certificate subject is 1-100 OR 1-50. This means that, given students receive a School-based Assessment Mark, which is already and should continue to be, a requirement for the HSC (no Internal Assessment Mark or a zero Internal Assessment Mark = subject does not count to UAI, or contributes a maximum of 50 marks id you are given special consideration), marks would range for about 30-100 or 15-50 in any subject.

Naturally, a mark of <29 would still be possible to 'achieve', but it would be unlikely that a large amount of students would fall into Band 1, as not many do under the current system (max. 5% generally fall into the bottom band, the fail band). The spread of marks would be graphed in linear form (a line graph). This would be a curved line in most HSC subjects and the line graph would be purely for first examiners and second, all students eligible in NSW, Australia to obtain an HSC Record of Achievement - they could then see the true spread of RAW marks.

The amount of students in each band would not be pre-determined and raw marks only would be reported on the HSC Record of Achievement. NO ALIGNING and NO MODERATING. Most importantly, no SCALING.

The revised capped mark for General Mathematics is 91. Provided by teachers in the form of a written notice at the time of choosing HSC subjects is an indication that General Maths has a maximum achievable mark of 91 and a reminder notice would be provided to students at the beginning of the Preliminary course year (Year 11) and also in the HSC year (Term 4, Year 11) would KNOW that General Maths is 'marked out of 91', NOT out of 100. It is proposed by me, James Schofield (LOL), that the final HSC external assessment/examination for General Maths and ALL subjects are marked out of 100, with the exception of one-unit courses which are, and would be, marked out of 50... however, General Maths marks would be converted to a mark of 91.

E.g.
Student A - General Mathematics
School-based Assessment Mark
98
External Assessment Mark
95
HSC Mark (the average of the two marks)
96.5
BECOMES

School-based Assessment Mark
98/100*91/1 = 89.18, which becomes 89 (nearest whole number).
External Assessment Mark
95/100*91 = 86.45, which becomes 86.
HSC Mark
89+86 = 87.5, which of course, becomes 88 (nearest whole number).


There you go! Happy? (Don't bother posting 'no', LOL ... it won't annoy me and it will just make you look petty ha, ha, ah, ha ha).




Ciao!

 

[spence]

There you go! Happy? (Don't bother posting 'no', LOL ... it won't annoy me and it will just make you look petty ha, ha, ah, ha ha).




Ciao!

So anyone who disagrees with you is petty? That's some real solid logic you've got going there

 

[undalay]

Don't be so quick to criticise. Have any of you read the article about the UAI being dumped for HSC students from the 2010 HSC year (I doubt it will get through this year despite speculation to the contrary)? The new system will be similar, it is called the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Ranking) and all senior high school students in Australia will be eligible to receive one, with the scaling done by UAC (Universities Admissions Commission) the same for each state and territory. Queensland will keep their OP (Overall Position) system until 2012, or perhaps even later. So ... the highest rank will be 99.95, the lowest is likely to be 'Below 30' ... in other words, 'available upon request'.

My system is not the same as the ATAR. However, for the sake of education speak, let me adopt ATAR as the new name for my proposed system for iniversities admission rankings.

ATAR and HSC are more or less the same system. SAME scaling, only difference is ATAR has no 100UAI

School-based Assessment Mark
98/100*91/1 = 89.18, which becomes 89 (nearest whole number).
External Assessment Mark
95/100*91 = 86.45, which becomes 86.
HSC Mark
89+86 = 87.5, which of course, becomes 88 (nearest whole number).

Ciao!

First of all you just scaled marks. Yes you do have scaling, only difference is that yours is linear. Second how are you going to get the school based assessment mark without aligning? I spose you'll just let easy schools have their 100 assessment marks, etc.

People doing D&T are still going to complain that there marks are capped. You haven't done anything to solve anything.

Your main problem as far as I can tell, is you want to get RID of scaling so that people doing d&t won't be disadvantaged.
People doing d&t are still going to complain that under your system they get scaled down. Yes it is still scaling. The only problem now is that even if they get 100% in the exam they will get scaled down to like a 90. Your system is still scaling.

Now your point about normalising the difficulty for every subject. Not only is that impossible, we need to choose a standard. General math difficulty? Too easy for most. 4u math difficulty? Too hard for most. 2u Math difficulty? Might as well just cull 3u and 4u from the subject pool.

 

[tommykins]

how is capping the marks of general math and allowing 100 for 4unit any different

 

[Fortify]

Learn to read. Posting 'no I don't agree' and not justifying your point of view is petty as I have gone to a lot of trouble to post arguments supporting my own point of view, and therefore students or lay people shouldn't spam and write a simple 'no' without justification. However, you may wish to type 'no' you can, but I won't reply...

Calm down, my friend. If you wish to complain, go complain to Board of Studies and yes I agree with you. It is quite unfair but what can we do about it?

 

[Schoey93]

ATAR and HSC are more or less the same system. SAME scaling, only difference is ATAR has no 100UAI



First of all you just scaled marks. Yes you do have scaling, only difference is that yours is linear. Second how are you going to get the school based assessment mark without aligning? I spose you'll just let easy schools have their 100 assessment marks, etc.

People doing D&T are still going to complain that there marks are capped. You haven't done anything to solve anything.

Your main problem as far as I can tell, is you want to get RID of scaling so that people doing d&t won't be disadvantaged.
People doing d&t are still going to complain that under your system they get scaled down. Yes it is still scaling. The only problem now is that even if they get 100% in the exam they will get scaled down to like a 90. Your system is still scaling.

NO, you just don't get 100/100. It does NOT work that way for capped subject under my system. You KNOW beforehand, in YEAR 10 that you are choosing a capped subject. It would be information provided to all continuing student, additional and contained in the booklet currently entitled: Studying for the NSW Higher School Certificate: An Information Booklet for Year 10 Students 2009 (a new booklet comes out every year and schools are supposed to give it to students, although this is obviously not a strict policy of the Board of Studies NSW).

NO, it is NOT scaling. Call it 'linear scaling' if you like but it is completely different to the current scaling system (albeit, I admit there are some accidental similarities which need not be rectified... ask me about it if you like) because students are aware of a CAP. Their mark will not effectively be scaled... it will simply be changed, e.g. currently I believe the General Maths external HSC examination to be marked out of 80 in the HSC... what happens is final exam marks from all students of the course in NSW Australia are multiplied by 100, aligned and then reported.

Again, with aligning, students' marks would NOT be aligned, at all, under my new system. Okay? Maybe not to you, but it is to me. Don't try to argue that just because you go to some fancy selective school which extends you to university-level in High School subjects that your marks should be pushed up more. (I think this was what you were getting at, but to be honest I am not entirely sure what your last point was... however I understood the rest.)

Now your point about normalising the difficulty for every subject. Not only is that impossible, we need to choose a standard. General math difficulty? Too easy for most. 4u math difficulty? Too hard for most. 2u Math difficulty? Might as well just cull 3u and 4u from the subject pool.

I did NOT make a point of normalising the difficult of every NSW HSC subject. That was a different person and you have me confused with another BoS user. I do not agree with this user on this issue and I believe subjects SHOULD be of varying degrees of difficulty.

My argument is that, however, despite varying difficulty, all NSW HSC students... and heck, students from other Australian states and territories too doing their Year 12 Certificates deserve to know how their marks are treated. More so, the marks should be treated fairly, not scaled, and if what I said is scaling; I stand by my opinion that linear scaling is more fair and just, less time-consuming for markers (which shouldn't be an issue, but it is right), easier to understand for all students of Higher School Education in Australia and a simple yet effective way of determining marks contributed to the ATAR ... with the maximum rank being 99.95, only raw marks would be contirbuted to the Australian Tertiary Admissions Ranking under my proposed system. Love it or hate it, it is not perfect (nothing truly is, mind you) but it's good, it's worthwhile and why not put pressure on the government to give it a go?

I just might. Nathan Rees does need a little help. And not from Rudd...Rees relies to much on good, old Kevin 07.

 

[undalay]

NO, it is NOT scaling. Call it 'linear scaling' if you like but it is completely different to the current scaling system (albeit, I admit there are some accidental similarities which need not be rectified... ask me about it if you like) because students are aware of a CAP. Their mark will not effectively be scaled... it will simply be changed, e.g. currently I believe the General Maths external HSC examination to be marked out of 80 in the HSC... what happens is final exam marks from all students of the course in NSW Australia are multiplied by 100, aligned and then reported.

Again, with aligning, students' marks would NOT be aligned, at all, under my new system. Okay? Maybe not to you, but it is to me. Don't try to argue that just because you go to some fancy selective school which extends you to university-level in High School subjects that your marks should be pushed up more. (I think this was what you were getting at, but to be honest I am not entirely sure what your last point was... however I understood the rest.)

You're right we should have no aligning. I'm sure plenty of schools will make VERY VERY hard assessments to differentiate their students. In fact I think with the introduction of no aligning most schools won't just put incredibly easy assessments so their students can get the highest UAI (/ATAR) possible. /sarcasm.

marks contributed to the ATAR ... with the maximum rank being 99.95, only raw marks would be contirbuted to the Australian Tertiary Admissions Ranking under my proposed system.

Link, quote, or excerpt please.
I have a sneaking suspicion the semantics are eluding us.

Furthermore, you know what the simple solution would be?
Just increase the scaling of subjects. Just a suggestion

Also what is your definition of scaling?

 

[Schoey93]

With no aligning or moderating, the simple solution to the problem of schools potentially creating easy assessment tasks is to set 5 assessment tasks per subject per year for the HSC (from Term 4 of Prelim - Term 3 of HSC). Simple, easy, why did you not realise that? The trial would be and already is, part of the School-based Assessment Mark and therefore it is a school assessment task. Trials should be the same across the state, in my opinion. I believe they already are the same. However, if this is not the case please let me know! I really do think scaling is unfair and I do actually believe that Australian students can stand up to the Boards of Studies throughout Australia and to UAC. It has gone on long enough that students marks be unfairly treated. Sure, it's hardly a social justice issue, but hey, why not make things more simple... not to simple like back in the day of the x/500 TER with NO SCALING whatsoever and NO CAPPING... that would be ridiculous.

Let's just have caps that everyone should be aware of, provided they pay attention at subject choices night and read the reminder notices they would receive in Years 11 and 12... "your subject is capped at 91" or "this subject is capped at 95, please be aware of this, the maximum mark you may achieve is 95, which represents first place in the state if anyone achieves this high raw mark" etc.


Any more qualms?

Feel free to PM me on BoS or just continue to post here (which is preferable to me, LOL). Bye for now!

 

[undalay]

With no aligning or moderating, the simple solution to the problem of schools potentially creating easy assessment tasks is to set 5 assessment tasks per subject per year for the HSC (from Term 4 of Prelim - Term 3 of HSC). Simple, easy, why did you not realise that? The trial would be and already is, part of the School-based Assessment Mark and therefore it is a school assessment task. Trials should be the same across the state, in my opinion. I believe they already are the same. However, if this is not the case please let me know! I really do think scaling is unfair and I do actually believe that Australian students can stand up to the Boards of Studies throughout Australia and to UAC. It has gone on long enough that students marks be unfairly treated. Sure, it's hardly a social justice issue, but hey, why not make things more simple... not to simple like back in the day of the x/500 TER with NO SCALING whatsoever and NO CAPPING... that would be ridiculous.

Let's just have caps that everyone should be aware of, provided they pay attention at subject choices night and read the reminder notices they would receive in Years 11 and 12... "your subject is capped at 91" or "this subject is capped at 95, please be aware of this, the maximum mark you may achieve is 95, which represents first place in the state if anyone achieves this high raw mark" etc.

Any more qualms?

Feel free to PM me on BoS or just continue to post here (which is preferable to me, LOL). Bye for now!

I want to know specifically and in detail why you dislike the scaling system.

Also standardised assessments are very hard to implement. First you'd need a 4-6 break for each assessment period, to ensure that each subject is tested across the board at the same time, otherwise people could easily cheat, and/or have clashes in timetable. This would be not only a waste of term time, it would also take heaps of resources to mark everything etc etc.

 

[James Cos]

OP, I can see you've put effort into your policy proposals, but you are sadly and greatly misinformed.

Do you understand the different concepts of moderation, alignment and scaling? It doesn't appear like you do.

Did you know that the way the Board of Studies reports the aligned marks to you has no bearing at all on UAC's calculation of the UAI (ATAR)?

At present, the method of scaling used to compare different courses in the calculation of the aggregate is 100% fair - because there is no human intervention at all, and there are no assumptions made about the difficulty of each course. Scaling of each course is carried out afresh each year, using a complex mathematical algorithm - looking at the relative performance of candidates in each course, compared to their performance in other courses.

Unlike your flawed system, there are no arbitrarily defined "caps" on subjects. How can you assume one subject is "easier" than another? It's all subjective. This is why the current system, which objectively determines "caps" using a mathematical formula, is fair.

Don't bash "scaling" before you know the facts.

 

[Schoey93]

OP, I can see you've put effort into your policy proposals, but you are sadly and greatly misinformed.

Do you understand the different concepts of moderation, alignment and scaling? It doesn't appear like you do.

Did you know that the way the Board of Studies reports the aligned marks to you has no bearing at all on UAC's calculation of the UAI (ATAR)?

Yes, I did know that.

At present, the method of scaling used to compare different courses in the calculation of the aggregate is 100% fair - because there is no human intervention at all, and there are no assumptions made about the difficulty of each course. Scaling of each course is carried out afresh each year, using a complex mathematical algorithm - looking at the relative performance of candidates in each course, compared to their performance in other courses.

Mathematics is not always objective. It can be manipulated to achieve certain results, naturally. You do not know how the UAC scales subjects. You know they use an algorithm but you don't know what the algorithm is or what is looks like, unless you work or have worked from the UAC post-2001 you actually don't know for sure what you're advocating.

Unlike your flawed system, there are no arbitrarily defined "caps" on subjects. How can you assume one subject is "easier" than another? It's all subjective. This is why the current system, which objectively determines "caps" using a mathematical formula, is fair.

Don't bash "scaling" before you know the facts.

Flawed system? Wow, I'm cut dude. [/sarcasm] It's just a proposal and as I have said before, it is not meant to be a perfect system, but I do believe involving students in marking processes for the NSW HSC and other nation-wide Certificates of Education in Australia is a good idea. Students should have access to raw marks in all Australian states, just like they used to, pre-2001 (actually, UAI was introduced before 2001, but the new Standards-based HSC was introduced for examination in 2001, which brought with it the ills of aligning, moderating and a misinterpretation of scaling (due to some students believing aligned marks, reported marks that is, have a bearing on your overall UAI rank... which they don't).

I will bash scaling as much as I like. Oh, and FYI, inverted commas are for trivial phrases or terms that are inappropriate in the context of a sentence, yet no other word seems to fit.
Scaling should not have had inverted commas around it. Just a language tip bud.

 

[tommykins]

so much effort for something that means shit all once you're in uni.

heh.

 

[helper]

Why does you understanding the system better mean its fairer?

Why is linear scaling fairer, when all inteliigence and other studies show that the population is close to a normal distribution used in the current scaling system?

I would say one of the weaknesses of the current system is it doesn't use a polynomial curve in the moderation process.


To have a common 5 tasks per subject, how are you going to make an exam timetable, when the current HSC has clashes, even over a 5 week period.
So what are you going to do to prevent leaking of these assessments?
How are you going to ensure the are marked reliably? To have them set commonly, is the minor part of the problem.

Aligning doesn't come into the UAI, so its irrelevent to UAIs

How are you going to take into account variations in difficulty in subjects, eg Physics one year may be easier and harder the next year?

Why would your system be less time consuming for markers?

How do you expect the spread of the exam marks to come out in the raw?

I am not going to say the current system is perfect but I can't see anything in your system that will make it fairer to the majority of the students.

 

[cem]

Couple of points raised/mentioned by different posters:

Not all schools do the same Trial Exams. They don't even do them at the same time let alone do the same papers. No other school will do exactly the same paper as my students as I don't know whether I will use the CSSA paper or the Independent Trial paper as the base paper and how many questions on topics not yet finished I have to change.

Markers take no notice of potential scaling or aligning. We mark to a marking guideline and have no imput (unless one of the six on the aligning committee) to the marks used for aligning.

Moderation and Scaling are done after we have finished, based on this year's students' results and not on previous years' results.

 

[Schoey93]

Yes, but moderation is still unfair CEM. Tell me how it isn't. The School-based Assessment mark a student receives in any NSW HSC subject is equal to the mark achieved in the HSC external assessment or exam that matches their rank.

E.g.

Student A achieves a School-based Assessment Mark of 75 in Biology.
Student A achieves 94 in the exam.

Because Student A achieved only an average School-based Assessment Mark, and was ranked twentieth from thirty-four students, they receive th twentieth best HSC exam mark achieved by a member of one of the two Biology classes at their educational institution (or school/TAFE).

Therefore, twentieth best HSC exam mark was 61. Student A achieves the following NSW HSC Biology marks at the end of a school year:
School-based Assessment Mark: 61
HSC Examination Mark: 95
HSC Mark = (61+94)/2 = 155/2 = 77.5, which becomes 78.

So Student A is disadvantaged for slipping up in say, two assessments, being ranked near the top in all other Biology assessments for their school, acing the exam and then... disadvantaged. She gets a mark of 78% rather than a mark = (75+94)/2 = 169/2 = 89.5 = 90.

So she drops from a Band 6 final HSC mark to an average Band 4 mark. Yes, so what? But this would have an adverse impact on her ATAR, forcing her to take the long road to get to her chosen career path or to work in odd jobs, which may leave her unsatisfied and unhappy throughout her life (unlikely yes, but at the very least, having missed out on admission to university courses, she might struggle financially to care for herself or burden her parents for some years).

 

[spence]

Yes, but moderation is still unfair CEM. Tell me how it isn't. The School-based Assessment mark a student receives in any NSW HSC subject is equal to the mark achieved in the HSC external assessment or exam that matches their rank.

E.g.

Student A achieves a School-based Assessment Mark of 75 in Biology.
Student A achieves 94 in the exam.

Because Student A achieved only an average School-based Assessment Mark, and was ranked twentieth from thirty-four students, they receive th twentieth best HSC exam mark achieved by a member of one of the two Biology classes at their educational institution (or school/TAFE).

Therefore, twentieth best HSC exam mark was 61. Student A achieves the following NSW HSC Biology marks at the end of a school year:
School-based Assessment Mark: 61
HSC Examination Mark: 95
HSC Mark = (61+94)/2 = 155/2 = 77.5, which becomes 78.

So Student A is disadvantaged for slipping up in say, two assessments, being ranked near the top in all other Biology assessments for their school, acing the exam and then... disadvantaged. She gets a mark of 78% rather than a mark = (75+94)/2 = 169/2 = 89.5 = 90.

So she drops from a Band 6 final HSC mark to an average Band 4 mark. Yes, so what? But this would have an adverse impact on her ATAR, forcing her to take the long road to get to her chosen career path or to work in odd jobs, which may leave her unsatisfied and unhappy throughout her life (unlikely yes, but at the very least, having missed out on admission to university courses, she might struggle financially to care for herself or burden her parents for some years).

So you're saying that even if they fuck up assessments, they don't deserve to get a lower rank?