::A Geek in Korea::

I gave three tests to the same level of students today. Theoretically they should have all scored around the same on the tests. The students in my first two classes were given two days to prepare. The students in my third class were given TWO WEEKS to prepare because they are not good at English in any metric I have discovered.

With the computer system I had available to me, I could see the median scores after each class. The first class had two overachievers, one or two students in the acceptable range, and three failing students that were lumped around the 50% mark.

The second class, which is larger and has more behavior problems was shifted. The bell curve on this class was about 20% points lower. There were two outliers, but the best students in the second class were only as good as the acceptable students in the first class. The average in the second class was as low as the failing students in the first class, and the worst students in the second class were 20 points below the average students in the first class.

I examined the test and decided to reweigh the test questions. Instead of setting the listening and reading sections evenly for points, I tripled the weight of the part the students did for homework, and counted the listening as a quarter, instead of a half of the test. This was to even out the grades for students that did homework, but suck at listening in class. I thought that if they had prepared even a little bit they could score better.

Unfortunately, the trend continued in the third class. The students in this class were shifted ANOTHER twenty points worse than my second class. The same test, and they were on average 40% worse than the best students earlier in the day. This was after reweighing questions that HEAVILY favored the multiple choice section of the test. I made it easier, and they sucked considerably harder. RANDOM CHANCE scored higher than these students.

I brought in the director because when the class average was hovering around 30%, there HAD to be something going on. The director went student by student in the class and asked them about their excuse. “I had a test!”, “I was busy!”, “I forgot!”, “My dad had me help me do a…(long winded excuse not relevant)”, “I was late to my other class…”. The worst excuse was, “I didn’t study because I don’t care.”

My director flipped out over that one.

Anyway, I’ll have to figure out a solution to the moronic students eventually. It might require the entire class, save one student that overachieved, back another semester to a lower grade. Or they could all just quit in frustration or something. Who knows?