James Lu, I salute you

[hawks08]

I personally did not see James Lu's post but I assume it was about scaling?
I am undecided about scaling. I definitely needs to be there in some cases ( further,methods,spesh) but in other cases I believe it does not work. For example my english teacher was telling us about her daughter who among other things did P.E and Spesh. Her daughter was a natural at maths and did spesh no problem but when it came to P.e found that she had to put double the amount of time in to get a reasonable score. She ended up getting raw 41 for spesh and 30 for p.e. P.e also goes down by 2 or something. What I am getting at people think differently and what one person may consider "hard", another may call "easy". So in that respect scaling is wrong. What do you guys think?

[tram]

out of intrest where is the orignal post from james lu?

[appianway]

I think James' comments were just in the newspaper berating the VCE system.

[Yitzi_K]

If scaling was required, how about marking the subject more leniently and hence people will have a higher raw score. Then the subject can scale lower and eveyone is happy...?

How does one mark 'leniently'? For example, in spesh, if an answer is wrong, it's wrong.

[m@tty]

40 in chem/physics does not become a 45, it's closer to 43~. Both of those subjects will scale from 45->47~. I still dispute the implied difficulty of Latin. If anything, removing the 5 makes it much more fair.

Okay, yes, I concede that the raw scores required for 45 in Chem/Physics are a little higher than I said.

And the extra 5 is not in any way meant to be fair. It is meant to be fair before the five, then as an incentive extra is added. That is why it is irrelevant to your comparison.

I see your point, although I disagree with the logic that "I got 50 in every other subject so its fair I got 50~ in subject x". That is to say, just because I get 50 in English, MM, phys and accounting doesn't mean I should also get 50 in chemistry.

It is this logic that underpins scaling, essentially. They take students' raw scores and infer the difficulty of scoring in a certain subject. This is done by the disparity between the raw scores obtained by the students within that subject and the raw scores achieved by the cohort in other subjects. So, in essence, they look and say "all-round top students are only mid-range students in x subject. Hence the scores obtained by students of x cohort needs adjustment upward." This is the basis for an argument for what you said there, and holds so long as the other students equal with you and above are generally of an equally high level.

[iffets12345]

.

If scaling was required, how about marking the subject more leniently and hence people will have a higher raw score. Then the subject can scale lower and eveyone is happy...?

If we mark more leniently, the standard of VCE would be even worse than it already is compared to things like IB and HSC.
Sorry, I don't like that ><.

How does one mark 'leniently'? For example, in spesh, if an answer is wrong, it's wrong.

Yup, referring to LOTEs in most cases.
For essays, maybe they could demand a lower level of say, vocabulary - whatever the marking scheme.

For spesh, maybe it could be modified by requiring not as much compulsory workings. However, it's very hard to say for Maths itself

I am sorry but I CANNOT agree with this leniency appeal. It would demote the standards of VCE even further than it already has been compared to the rest of the world and IB/HSC.

[Akirus]

40 in chem/physics does not become a 45, it's closer to 43~. Both of those subjects will scale from 45->47~. I still dispute the implied difficulty of Latin. If anything, removing the 5 makes it much more fair.

Okay, yes, I concede that the raw scores required for 45 in Chem/Physics are a little higher than I said.

And the extra 5 is not in any way meant to be fair. It is meant to be fair before the five, then as an incentive extra is added. That is why it is irrelevant to your comparison.

That was my point; you were suggesting that if the +5 incentive is removed, it would be unfair, whereas I maintain that it is not.

I see your point, although I disagree with the logic that "I got 50 in every other subject so its fair I got 50~ in subject x". That is to say, just because I get 50 in English, MM, phys and accounting doesn't mean I should also get 50 in chemistry.

It is this logic that underpins scaling, essentially. They take students' raw scores and infer the difficulty of scoring in a certain subject. This is done by the disparity between the raw scores obtained by the students within that subject and the raw scores achieved by the cohort in other subjects. So, in essence, they look and say "all-round top students are only mid-range students in x subject. Hence the scores obtained by students of x cohort needs adjustment upward." This is the basis for an argument for what you said there, and holds so long as the other students equal with you and above are generally of an equally high level.

Scaling is based upon the raw score of the student, not the scaled score, nor is it based upon the scores of a single individual. Just because I get 50 in every other subject does not mean my chemistry grade should also scale up to 50.

[iffets12345]

No but it should scale close to that since you are supposed to be smart my friend. It's not foolproof but it gives universities an idea of where you stand. I think that is the point.

[Akirus]

No but it should scale close to that since you are supposed to be smart my friend. It's not foolproof but it gives universities an idea of where you stand. I think that is the point.

If that's the case, why give everyone multiple subjects? Lets just do one each since all the others 'should scale close' anyway, right?

On another note, I re-read James Lu's letter and at the moment, I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of methods and all the pseudo-science we do in physics, I want to start learning real stuff. The notion that I'll have to spend multiple weeks doing practice exams and other miscellaneous preparations is making me sick, especially when I consider all the things I could possibly learn in that time.

[m@tty]

I see your point, although I disagree with the logic that "I got 50 in every other subject so its fair I got 50~ in subject x". That is to say, just because I get 50 in English, MM, phys and accounting doesn't mean I should also get 50 in chemistry.

It is this logic that underpins scaling, essentially. They take students' raw scores and infer the difficulty of scoring in a certain subject. This is done by the disparity between the raw scores obtained by the students within that subject and the raw scores achieved by the cohort in other subjects. So, in essence, they look and say "all-round top students are only mid-range students in x subject. Hence the scores obtained by students of x cohort needs adjustment upward." This is the basis for an argument for what you said there, and holds so long as the other students equal with you and above are generally of an equally high level.

Scaling is based upon the raw score of the student, not the scaled score, nor is it based upon the scores of a single individual. Just because I get 50 in every other subject does not mean my chemistry grade should also scale up to 50.

I have no idea where you got the "scaled" and "individual student" stuff from... I was merely linking the scaling process to your example when I talked of a small group of students.

That's why I added this little clause here:

[This] holds so long as the other students equal with you and above are generally of an equally high level.

If everyone equal to you and above you in a cohort was hitting 50 raw all round(yes, this is an exaggeration) then you should receive a scaled score very close to 50. Or, is it not fair that 35 raw in Latin be scaled to 45(before government bonus) if essentially all students who score 35 and above are getting 45 and above in their other subjects?

[Chavi]

nobody really knows how the VCE system works. Not even those that work at VCAA. Discussing the inner workings of scaling and standardization is just speculation.
Sometimes you hit the jackpot and laugh all the way to the bank, sometimes you don't.
However, in the scheme of things VCE is relatively unimportant, so I wouldn't worry too much.

[lynt.br]

I may be wrong but I don't think James Lu's etter was primarily about scaling in the first place? Rather he criticised the way many VCE subjects are taught because of the heavy focus on passing exams rather than creating an interest in the subject itself.

A few people have implied in their posts that scaling reflects the difficulty of the subject. It is more accurate to say scaling reflects the strength of the cohort. VCAA does not arbitrarily determine which are 'hard' subjects when deciding how much to scale.

The perception that you need to do spesh, chem, methods, physics etc to do well is wrong and has been proven wrong year after year.  The few exceptions are 99.95 TER scores, which in some years require a subject to scale past 50. As far as I am aware there is nothing that 'requires' a TER of 99.95. I believe some uni scholarships are awarded for scores of 99.90 and above? Regardless there are still plenty of private trust scholarships which award scholarships based on factors other than your TER.

Also people who are proclaiming X subject should scale by 3 less or Y subject should scale up by 5 more should really provide statistically analysis to show where these numbers are coming from and why they are 'fairer' than the current scaling values. Otherwise, it just seems like you are pulling numbers out of thin air.

[EvangelionZeta]

I may be wrong but I don't think James Lu's etter was primarily about scaling in the first place? Rather he criticised the way many VCE subjects are taught because of the heavy focus on passing exams rather than creating an interest in the subject itself.

A few people have implied in their posts that scaling reflects the difficulty of the subject. It is more accurate to say scaling reflects the strength of the cohort. VCAA does not arbitrarily determine which are 'hard' subjects when deciding how much to scale.

The perception that you need to do spesh, chem, methods, physics etc to do well is wrong and has been proven wrong year after year.  The few exceptions are 99.95 TER scores, which in some years require a subject to scale past 50. As far as I am aware there is nothing that 'requires' a TER of 99.95. I believe some uni scholarships are awarded for scores of 99.90 and above? Regardless there are still plenty of private trust scholarships which award scholarships based on factors other than your TER.

Also people who are proclaiming X subject should scale by 3 less or Y subject should scale up by 5 more should really provide statistically analysis to show where these numbers are coming from and why they are 'fairer' than the current scaling values. Otherwise, it just seems like you are pulling numbers out of thin air.

Precisely - all the talk of scaling is actually (mostly) irrelevant to what James was talking about in the first place. 

Also, again, in recent years, the 99.95 cutoff hasn't required a subject to scale past 50 at all...

[ninwa]

To those complaining about the Chinese scaling. Chinese is my first language, I speak it at home, and I've looked at the Chinese FL paper and I would've been capable of doing it. Yet I would have qualified for SL. The poor non-natives in Chinese deserve all the scaling they can get >_>

Don't say a subject doesn't deserve its scaling til you've done it. Languages are damn difficult.

[vexx]

To those complaining about the Chinese scaling. Chinese is my first language, I speak it at home, and I've looked at the Chinese FL paper and I would've been capable of doing it. Yet I would have qualified for SL. The poor non-natives in Chinese deserve all the scaling they can get >_>

Don't say a subject doesn't deserve its scaling til you've done it. Languages are damn difficult.

Yes that is true, however, experiences from people someone knows can definitely be used as evidence for saying so. I know of a bunch of people who found latin not hard at all, and many of them weren't that smart either, they ended up with low 30's with not much difficulty, and only did it to abuse the scaling- and it pushed up their enter A LOT.

i would have done latin if my school offered it, but it doesn't, and i'm annoyed that im disadvantaged by the fact none of my subjects scale that high; some languages definitely need to be lowered or else it is very unfair.

i'm sure it's very difficult to get 40+ in languages anyway, but to get a 35 in a language can be done for many people and it really should scale not over 9 or 10, getting a 45 is still a very good score after scaling.. just scaled 15+ is ridiculous..