Hi @iborganization, could you provide more transparency regarding how the IB grades were calculated this year? In particular details about what statistical analysis that was performed to combine historical data from schools, predicted grades and course work? #IBresults #IB (1/8)
Did you study the historical relationship for each school between the results of individual school performance on coursework and performance on exams in order to take into account the fact that some schools will perform better on coursework and some better on exams? (2/8)
Did you ensure that the grade distribution was similar this year to that in previous years? Overall but also by school. For instance in a given school, did you make an effort to ensure that a similar number of students received grades in the 40s and above? (3/8)
(and a similar number in each grade boundary) as compared with previous years in that school? And that the average score there was the same relative to a 5 year average? I’ve received reports that some schools have significantly lower grades relative to their usual performance.
It seems odd that schools who have consistently had high scores of 43,44 and 45 in previous years and obtained many students with grades in the 40s could end up with the highest score attained this year being 40 (as is the case in some schools). (5/8)
This makes me wonder whether the heavy reliance on coursework without taking into account relative performance (by school) on exams versus coursework could have led to these types of results which would appear to be problematic and not truly indicative of the grades
that many students would have achieved had they been able to take their exams. Was coursework given the same weight in previous years, with the statistical prediction of the exam grade given the weight as exams from previous years? This would seem the best way to do this. (6/8)
Are you able to release any more data about this? Is the grade distribution stratified by school available? I notice that the statistical bulletin for this year is not yet available. When do you anticipate these being available and will more information be released this year?
(Note there is no selection bias here as the school in question is a school with which I have close links.) While these could be outliers it seems to indicate that the IB didn’t take into account some of the considerations above, raising questions about the analysis. (8/8)
