DIFFERENTIAL VARIABILITY OF TEST SCORES AMONG SCHOOLS: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF THE FIFTH-GRADE INVALSI TEST USING HETEROSCEDASTIC RANDOM EFFECTS
Journal Title: Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods - Year 2011, Vol 6, Issue 4
Abstract
The performance of a school system can be evaluated through the learning levels of the pupils, usually summarized by school mean scores. The variability of the mean scores among schools is rarely studied in detail, though it is a crucial issue especially in primary schools: in fact, a high variability among schools raises doubts on the capacity of the system to guarantee equal educational opportunities. To investigate the patterns of variability in Italy, we analyse data from INVALSI, the Italian national institute for the evaluation of the school system, which regularly carries out standardized tests to assess the learning levels of the pupils at various grades. We consider the mathematics test administered to fifth-grade pupils at the end of the 2008/2009 year, along with a pupil's questionnaire for measuring socio-economic factors. The analysis is performed using a random intercept linear model on the Rasch score of the mathematics test, with pupil-level errors depending on gender and school-level errors depending on the geographical area. The model includes several demographic and socioeconomic explanatory variables and some compositional variables obtained as school means of pupil variables. The results show a considerable increase in the residual variance among schools when going from North to South, pointing out a serious issue of fairness in Southern Italy. The situation is mitigated by the finding that a substantial part of the residual variance among schools is due to a few schools with exceptionally positive results.
Authors and Affiliations
Claudia SANI, Leonardo GRILLI
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP151841
- DOI -
- Views 108
- Downloads 0
Security Management in a Multimedia System
In database security, the issue of providing a level of security for multimedia information is getting more and more known. For the moment the security of multimedia information is done through the security of the databa...
Increasing E-Trust: A Solution to Minimize Risk in E-Government Adoption
In the last decade, governments around the world have been working to capture the vast potential of the Internet to improve government processes. However, the success of these efforts depends, to a great extent, on how w...
Evaluating the Effects of the Optimization on the Quality of Distributed Applications
In this paper, we present the characteristic features of distributed applications. We also enumerate the modalities of optimizing them and the factors that influence the quality of distributed applications, as well as th...
Validity Examination of EFQM’s Results by Dea Models
The European Foundation Quality Management is one of the models dealing with the assessment of an organization’s function using a self-assessment for measuring the concepts, some of which are more and more qualitative. C...
RATING SCALE OPTIMIZATION IN SURVEY RESEARCH: AN APPLICATION OF THE RASCH RATING SCALE MODEL
Linacre (1997) describes rating scale optimization as "fine-tuning" to try to squeeze the last ounce of performance out of a test [or survey]”. In the survey research arena, rating scale optimization often involves colla...