Kalie takes a test

One day, Kalie and her classmates were asked to take a special test. The test had arrived from parts unknown in a special package on the very day the test was to be given. Kalie could tell it was very important. Everyone in the school had to take it, and her teacher, Ms. Uneda, looked very serious as she passed out the test and pencils.

“Make sure you all have 2 pencils. Stop when you reach the end of each section. When you’re finished, put down your pencils. Do not look back through the test after I say ‘Stop.’ You have 30 minutes to complete this section.”

This was not the way Ms. Uneda usually talked. It was kind of weird, and it made Kalie nervous. When the test was over, Ms. Uneda collected the kids' answer sheets and booklets, and put them in envelopes to send them to Massachusetts, where they would be graded with tests taken by other kids all over the country.

Kalie’s parents received Kalie’s scores right around the 1st of June. The report looked very official, and it contained bad news: Kalie didn’t score well in the math section of the exam. Looking at the test report, her parents saw that she had scored in the 32nd percentile. Her parents, having seen lots of reports like this before, understood that meant she had done as well as 32% of the other kids who had taken the same test, but worse than 68% of them. Although Kalie seemed to be doing okay in school, Kalie’s parents decided that they should talk to her teacher. They wanted to get her opinion of why the test scores were lower than they expected.

Her parents were worried that Kalie's scores seemed well below average. In terms of the model, they were concerned that Kalie's sliders were set like this:

• School skills: Low
• Everything else: Normal

Activity

Using the sliders, can you create other explanations of why Kalie might have scored low on the exam? See if you can come up with 2 or 3 other possible explanations, in which her School skills were average or better.

Discussion

After hearing groups describe their alernative solutions, it's important to decide. What other things do we need to know to determine which explanation is most likely the case? How would you find these out if you were Kalie's parents?