Sigh. Pervasive everywhere! To that, my preferred response would be placement/end-of-unit/end-of-course testing using the actual curriculum employed by the district. If a student performs at a level on the actual core curriculum that is comparable to that routinely used to determine grade-advancement, then equity would demand that the student in question be considered to have mastered that grade level of material. E.g., if all other seventh-graders are considered to have passed math if they demonstrate cumulative mastery of the curriculum with a grade of 70 (in this case, using, say, the end-of-course test as a proxy for course grades), then a student who can pass the end-of-course test with a 70% should advance to the eighth grade math course. And if the average student completes the course with a grade of 85, then go ahead, use 85% as the cut score. Best would be if they actually had the end-of-course test score for the lowest passing student, but they might not have that data. And if they don't have any of that student data (which would be troubling from another angle, which there's no need to go into here), then, as 70% is widely considered mastery level (e.g., in standards-based grading systems), I'd suggest that cut score.
Last edited by aeh; 04/27/19 05:50 PM.
