Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Scarlet Letter no more?

It's getting into spring testing time (I believe the resident third grader had the count below 10 days 'til MCAS), and so it may be time for a bit of classroom redecorating:

Just seeing the letter F before an exam may make a student more likely to fail, while seeing the letter A can enhance a student's chance of success...The researchers found that the A group performed significantly better than the F group, getting an average of 11.08 of 12 answers correct. The F group on average got 9.42 answers correct. The researchers found the same pattern of results in two more studies, and even when they labeled some papers "Test Bank ID:J" to introduce a more neutral third condition. The performance of students whose exams had that label fell somewhere in between those with the A and F test papers.
How about a big "A" on the whiteboard in class?

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