Though I demonize standardized tests in general, the AP Statistics exam has a saving grace: the free response questions. The first section is made up of 40 multiple choice questions and counts for half of the exam grade. The other half is based on six free response questions.
Multiple choice questions (about which I have previously written in this blog) are one of the lowest quality assessment tools available to the teacher. How fair is it to the student that they could do a problem 95% correct and get zero credit? Writing such questions is a bore and a pain. Answering them even more so. And, if you develop good test-taking skills, you can learn how to improve your odds of making a good guess. Since there are no penalty points for incorrect answers on the AP Statistics multiple choice questions, students are free to guess away. So, random guessing will, on average, get you eight correct out of 40.
Fortunately, there are the free response questions. I have long strived to develop authentic assessment tools. I want tasks, projects, activities, and problems that develop students' learning skills such as critical reading, analysis, problem solving, and synthesis. The free response questions do pretty well here. Problems are written to present at least quasi-real-life scenarios and students are asked to use their statistical tools in a meaningful way.
They are far from perfect. Students do better if they understand what the AP readers are looking for in answers. Thus, it is possible to teach free response strategies. Therefore, I feel compelled to do just that and have already begun. My first test involved two free response questions from past AP Statistics exams, as I expect will be the case for each chapter test. That means my students should get at least 24 chances to practice answering free response questions this year before their practice exam in April when they will get 6 more.
That seems like a lot and so I am relieved that I find these to generally be quality questions. I am also very thankful for Jason Molesky's StatsMonkey web site and his list of Free Response AP Problems Yay (aka FRAPPYs). On this site, the questions have been sorted by topics making it much easier for me to write my tests. Once again, the MathTeacherBlogoSphere to the rescue.
One my challenges in using these questions in class will be to apply the scoring guidelines appropriately. The College Board has made these available and easy to find, but it will take me some time to learn how to score the questions correctly. I did an AP Institute this past summer, and that helped some. My experience teaching International Baccalaureate (IB) mathematics helps. Becoming an AP reader seems like an obvious move to help me in this area, but I am three years short of the three-years-of-experience-teaching-AP-Statistics requirement. I do not understand why I must wait three years to be able to have one fewer week of summer vacation.
Some questions for my readers: How do you use free response questions in your teaching? Do you always score them exactly as the AP guidelines suggest? Have you been successful in preparing your students for the AP exam without directly teaching test-taking strategies?
I can't say that I do anything special to prepare students for MC questions. Like you, I feel somewhat "icky" to do any activities which are specifically test prep. But all of my tests have MC questions, which they often struggle with at first. One idea my colleague and I put in place a few years ago is a "first choice / second choice" option, where students receive half credit by selecting the correct answer with their second choice. This gives some credit to those students who correctly identify the top 2 answers, but can't quite distinguish the nuance.
ReplyDeleteAlso, taking MC questions and removing the choices and having students work through them based on just them stem exposes them to the wording they will encounter on the exam.
I really like both ideas of the first/second choice option and taking MC questions and making them short answer questions. Thanks, Bob!
Delete