At its October 2003 meeting, the Board of Regents accepted the recommendations of the Math A Panel regarding the Regents Examination in Mathematics A, one of which was that:

Therefore, consistent with the recommendations from the Math A Panel and advice from expert psychometric consultants (i.e. testing experts) a score conversion chart was not sent to schools with the January 2004 Math A examination.  The following events occurred as a result of this recommendation. 

First the State Education Department (NYSED) selected a test form for the January 2004 administration, in accordance with the new format recommended by the Panel.  The new examination was reviewed by three separate committees of teachers, consistent with procedures instituted in August 2003.

In response to the Math A Panel's recommendation for a newly formatted examination, NYSED also organized a standard setting meeting. On December 11-12, 2003 NYSED and psychometric consultants convened a group of 19 practicing math teachers and other educators from across the State to set "Passing" and "Passing with Distinction" performance levels for the reformatted Regents Mathematics A Examination. These performance levels were used to create a score conversion chart for the January 2004 examination.

As recommended by the Math A Panel, NYSED then instituted a study to validate the Department’s test development process and scaling procedures, and to validate the score conversion chart resulting from the standard setting, prior to releasing them to the public. NYSED called upon expert psychometric consultants to design this study.   The study involved the analysis of nearly 20,000 actual student answer papers from the January 2004 administration, collected from a representative sample of schools from across the State. The size of the sample and the speed with which the data were processed can largely be attributed to the cooperation and initiative of BOCES and public and nonpublic schools across the State in providing the student answer papers very quickly, and staff of the Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES, who processed and compiled all the score data promptly and accurately.

Once data from all 20,000 student answer sheets had been compiled, a psychometric expert analyzed the performance of the test items.  The methodology used to do this analysis was developed by the expert consultant and approved by two other psychometric experts.  The results of the analysis were then reviewed by psychometric experts and the co-chairs of the Mathematics Standards Committee.

On the basis of this analysis, all these experts agree that the original score conversion chart is valid and consistent with the standard setting.  That score conversion chart is attached.  If you have questions about anything in this memo, you may send them to emscassessinfo@mail.nysed.gov

Attachment:  January 2004 Conversion Chart