Key Assessment Part 2

Section 1: Students
The students that have taken this assessment are students in a Math Finance Classroom. These
students are either 17 or 18 years old. They are all seniors in high school. The high school is a rural high
school in northeast Georgia. Math Finance is a class not recognized by the University System of Georgia,
therefore all these students have elected to take this course knowing that it will not count as a math credit
at any 4-year institution. These means that these students are either planning to attend technical schools,
certification programs, or enter the workforce when they are finished with high school. Many of these
students have failed math classes before and have been encouraged to take Math Finance because it
focuses on basic skills and involves a lot of practical application.
Section 2: Course
This course is called Math Finance. It focuses on basic math skills with an emphasis on practical
applications in real-world settings. It is a math taken by high school seniors who do not plan to attend a 4year university. Most of the student that take this course plan to either attend a technical school, enter a
certification program, or enter the workforce upon graduation. The course has a focus on personal and
small business finance. It focuses a lot on budgeting, simple investments, and general banking operations.
This particular assessment was intended to assess the students and their mastery of simple and compound
interest. It was intended to assess their understandings of the definitions of these two concepts and how to
use the formulas for both simple and compound interest in the context of real-world investment scenarios
presented as word problems. Below I have included the objective associated with this assessment and the
respective standard issued by the Georgia Department of Education.
Standard: MMFA3. Students will use formulas to investigate investments in banking and retirement
planning.
a. Apply simple and compound interest formulas.
- Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of the simple and compound
interest formulas by using them correctly in word problems.
Section 3: Descriptive Analysis
In my results I have calculated an average score of 84.09% correct answers. This shows that most
students did master the skills and concepts from the module of instruction. I calculated a standard
deviation of .242 and a median of 62.50% as shown in the table below.
Overall
Mean

84.09%

Std Dev

0.2421874798

Median

62.50%

I have also included in the results the percentage of the class that got each question right under the
column that contains the score for each student for each question. This allows me to see which question
was most or least missed amongst the students who took the assessment.

#1
%
Correct:

#2

#3

#4

81.82% 72.73% 81.82%

#5

86.36%

#6

86.36%

#7

86.36%

#8

90.91%

#9

81.82%

#10

90.91%

#11

81.82%

#12

90.91%

90.91%

I conducted the Spearman-Brown reliability test on this set of data to determine its reliability and the
results and calculation are shown in the table below.
Odd Items

Even Items

z-odd

z-even

z-product

Rnn

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

0.05135042255

1.486783883

0.07634698066

-0.5135042255

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

1.745914367

2.230175825

3.893696014

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

2.310769015

0.7433919417

1.717807065

0.05135042255

-0.7433919417

-0.03817349033

-0.5135042255

-0.5135042255

-0.7433919417

0.3817349033

-0.5135042255

Rel
0.7485323538

0.8561835898

1.745914367

1.486783883

2.595797342

-0.5135042255

2.310769015

2.230175825

5.153421194

Mean

5.090909091

StdDev

1.770366949

1.345185418

17.21624414

The results of the Spearman-Brown test show that the assessment had a reliability score of a .8562. This
shows that the assessment was somewhat reliable. It could be made more reliable in two ways. One way
to improve reliability would be to increase the number of questions on the test. Another way to improve
reliability in this assessment would be to create a more clear transition between questions involving the
simple interest formula and questions requiring the compound interest formula. This would help alleviate
any confusion associated with the two formulas.
Section 4: Strengths and Weaknesses
Below is a table that shows the percentage of the test-takers that answered each question
correctly.
Question: #1
%
Correct:

#2

#3

81.82% 72.73% 81.82%

#4
86.36%

#5
86.36%

#6
86.36%

#7
90.91%

#8
81.82%

#9
90.91%

#10
81.82%

#11
90.91%

#12
90.91%

This table helps show which problem were most and least missed. The most missed questions was #2.
This questions was the first questions involving the compound interest formula. Another question very
similar to #2 was #7. Both questions asked to student to calculate the interest amount of an investment
that is compounded daily. I think my students are weak in deciding which formula to use. The fact that #2
was the most missed question speaks to the idea that because #1 asked the students to use simple interest,
the students most likely used the simple interest formula on #2 as well and calculated an incorrect answer.
According to the data the students demonstrated strength in understanding the different pieces of each of
the formulas used. Questions #11 and #12 both asked the students questions about the meaning of
different variables in the investment formulas. The students on average did very well on these questions.
Individually there were five students who showed overall weaknesses in almost all aspects of the
objective being assessed. These students did not demonstrate proficiency with this standard because they
scored below 70% on this assessment. Because they show weaknesses with the entire standard I
hypothesize that they lacked foundational skills required to comprehend the word problems associated
with the test or use the formulas associated when they took the assessment. There are also factors like
lack of attendance and lack of motivation towards the content that most likely played roles in the 5 low
scores. The assessment had a somewhat high reliability score of .8562. This shows that it most likely was
not the reliability of the test that caused this 5 low scores. Also the mean score for the students on this

assessment was 84.09 which shows that on average the students demonstrated a fairly high level of
proficiency with the objective being assessed.
Section 5: Improvement Plan
I can achieve my instructional objective better by doing more to pre-assess my students. I could
perform a pre-assessment on these students that assesses some of the more foundational skills required to
achieve the objective. This would give me a better idea of which students would need more instructional
support during the learning process because of a lack of foundational knowledge. I could also improve
instruction by switching between examples that require the simple interest formula and examples that
require the compound interest formula. This would allow the students to get better accustomed to
switching between formulas and identifying pieces of problems that signal another formula is needed. As
far as the actual test is concerned, I could increase the reliability of the test by increasing the number of
test items in order to give students more chances to show their mastery of the objective identified. To
more effectively differentiate both instruction and testing needs, I could offer questions read-aloud to any
student in order to help both struggling readers and learners who are more comfortable comprehending
auditory questions to better understand each question.