When considering education in general, 11-40% of pupils know the material before the class begins.
This statistic is misleading. It means that 11-40% of students scored as an average student in the next grade up would score on the same test. This does not mean that they have mastered the material typically taught in their own grade or the next grade up.
That may be. Do you have a source for that information? Thanks, Kai.
The quoted source in
this post,
Accelerate Illinois, provides this citation: 4. Matthew C. Makel, Michael S.Matthews, Scott J. Peters, Karen Rambo-Hernandez, and Jonathan A. Plucker, “How Can So Many Students Be Invisible? Large Percentages of American Students Perform Above Grade Level”, Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, 2016.
I looked for a link, this is what I found:
1)
http://edpolicy.education.jhu.edu/h...ican-students-perform-above-grade-level/2)
http://edpolicy.education.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/StudentsinvisiblemastheadFINAL.pdfReading linked research report...
1- "performing above grade level"
2- "one in every five students has surpassed that criterion before the school year even starts"
3- not germane to this side conversation... but worth considering regarding grade inflation in general:
"textbook and curriculum analyses suggest that intellectual rigor declined significantly over the last hundred years;8"
4- "teachers, using pre-testing strategies, could eliminate 40-50% of the existing curriculum for advanced elementary school students without causing achievement declines on out-of-level standardized tests.9 The authors noted, “Targeted students had mastered some material in all content areas prior to instruction; at a minimum, they demonstrated mastery of one-fourth of the curriculum for the year before it was taught” (p. 81). A few students in the same study had mastered three-quarters of the upcoming year’s curriculum."
5- "cut scores on ELA and mathematics at four levels: below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced... proficient to indicate performance that was on grade level"
6- "students in a given grade level who scored at or above the proficiency threshold established for one year above their current grade in English Language Arts (ELA) or mathematics. Stated another way, all three tables present the percentage of students who are one or more years advanced in each content area."
7- "estimate how many students were at least one year above grade level, by determining how many students at the beginning of Grade 5 were already achieving at end-of-year Grade 5 proficiency levels on MAP reading. We were also able to determine how many of these above-grade-level students achieved MAP test scores equivalent to year-end scores for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders."
8- "At the beginning of their Grade 5 year, approximately 35% of students had scores commensurate with end-of-year Grade 5 proficiency reading levels... Further, approximately 10% of all Grade 5 students in our data demonstrated Grade 8 level end-of-year proficiency. These students were four school years ahead of grade level in reading..."
9- "Nearly 14% of all Grade 5 students at the beginning of the school year were already earning MAP scores consistent with end-of-Grade-5 proficiency... About 2.4% of all Grade 5 students were achieving at levels equal to, or above, the end-of-Grade-8 (or high school level, four school years ahead of grade level) in mathematics."
10- "... a MAP test score equivalent to ninth-grade performance is in fact based on ninth-grade content knowledge and skills."
numbers added to count excerpts
Although I was recalling information from 2+ years ago, and could've done so inaccurately, I believe the excerpts above indicate that "
11-40% of pupils know the material before the class begins" represents the findings fairly well.
While various assessments were utilized in this research, the methods described include early administration of the grade-level
end-of-year tests and therefore do not appear to be accurately summarized by the statement: "It means that 11-40% of students scored as an average student in the next grade up would score on the same test. This does not mean that they have mastered the material typically taught in their own grade or the next grade up."
Some students have significant inbound knowledge, however, with teachers/institutions incentivized to provide grades indicating "equal outcomes" these students may tend to receive grades indicating the same demonstrated knowledge as classmates. A variety of known grading techniques are in play, to deflate the reported grades of these students, and also inflate the reported grades of other students. This can occur at every educational level, including college.
