Posts by Betty Williams29

Adam Diaz67 said:Yeah. Basically, on the higher level, there are just two problems that would count as a 3 in high school. I hope that makes more sense now. You make the exam harder just to differentiate those top-tier candidates. So, someone who had an A in high school could realistically pull a B here, but if you want that A, you actually need to know how to tackle competition-level problems.

And yeah, you need a 50% score on the exam to pass. Anything less than that is just nonsense.

Anyway, check out that video from the previous page. Ford used a 50% passing threshold, and then everything followed a standard bell curve. That’s why you end up in a situation where you need 50 points to pass, but once you hit 52, people are already seeing Bs. When you don't have a set minimum and just go strictly by the Gauss distribution, it's easy to end up with a scenario where 25% is enough for a D, but you might need something like 60% to get an A. Sorry, but that's just statistics, it has nothing to do with how smart anyone is.

What's actually nonsense is your suggestion that someone with a C average in high school can't pass the advanced math exam without having B-level knowledge—or that you need to be a mathlete just to graduate with an A.

Adam Diaz67 said:Yeah. Basically, on the higher level, there are just two problems that would count as a 3 in high school. I hope that makes more sense now. You make the exam harder just to differentiate those top-tier candidates. So, someone who had an A in high school could realistically pull a B here, but if you want that A, you actually need to know how to tackle competition-level problems.

And yeah, you need a 50% score on the exam to pass. Anything less than that is just nonsense.

Anyway, check out that video from the previous page. Ford used a 50% passing threshold, and then everything followed a standard bell curve. That’s why you end up in a situation where you need 50 points to pass, but once you hit 52, people are already seeing Bs. When you don't have a set minimum and just go strictly by the Gauss distribution, it's easy to end up with a scenario where 25% is enough for a D, but you might need something like 60% to get an A. Sorry, but that's just statistics, it has nothing to do with how smart anyone is.

On one hand, you've got freshman year at a university where they've already hand-picked the students, and traditionally, a huge chunk of them get weeded out in the first semester anyway. For those students, the whole goal is just survival—just trying to pass. The whole debate about retaking exams is a total rabbit hole.

On the other hand, you've got the national SATs, which everyone in the country takes, where the priority isn't necessarily the specific score, but ranking high enough to get into a decent college.

The demographics, the type of test, and the motivation couldn't be more different.

Adam Diaz67 said:First off, a test doesn't need to be designed so that everyone passes. You should structure it so that 50% of the points come from tasks covering the core material someone at that level is expected to know. Even in high school, 50% is basically the threshold for a C. Why drop that to 20 or 30%? Especially for lower levels that already have a ton of middle school material to cover. Besides, those lower levels aren't even used for college admissions; you just need to pass them. So, the whole idea of using them for differentiation during enrollment doesn't really work. The goal for the lower levels is just to see if the student has enough knowledge to actually graduate high school and get their diploma. If they can't hit 50% at the lower level, then they obviously don't have what it takes to finish high school. If they fail, they fail. There's always a summer or fall retake period to get ready for next time.

The advanced level is where the scoring for admissions happens. That's where you can actually differentiate. For example, you could have tasks worth 50% that anyone aiming for a solid C should be able to handle. Then maybe 61-75% for a B student, and 76-90% for an A student. You differentiate them through that final 10%. An A student from high school would hit that 76-90 range because those tasks match what's expected for an A in high school, and on the Disney Music exam, that's enough for a B. To get an A on the Disney Music exam, you'd need competition-level questions. That's how you tell the difference between the honor students and those who just went the extra mile.

This is just an example. You can't build a perfect system. You just need to make one that's good enough and set a baseline that you won't go below. If you just want to graduate high school? Just hit the minimum 50% on the three lower levels.

What are you even getting at here? You don't want to go below 50% for a D, but on the advanced track, 50% is supposed to be a C. Is it even possible to get a failing grade on the advanced level?

urbantinker8 said:I’m honestly not sure where you read that anyone actually wants to turn the high school diploma into just some "ordinary exam."
The real goal should be to first transform the diploma into a standard, reliable, and objective assessment—one where the passing threshold doesn't just default to 20% regardless of how difficult the material is or how poorly students performed that year. I mean, it feels completely nonsensical when someone gets a passing grade despite scoring less than 50% on the test.
And as long as things stay this way, this whole system of external grading is pretty much useless.☕

Let me try explaining one more time why having a 50% pass rate for the SAT is bad news for everyone involved.

Picture a test with 10 questions and 10 total points:
5.6 points = C
7 points = B
8 points = A-
9 or 10 points = A+

What did we actually achieve with this setup?
- Half the test has to be super easy just so kids all over the US taking the SAT can pass and get their high school diploma.
- Every student spends half the test solving basic stuff, wasting about half the time without actually gaining anything useful for college rankings.
- All the top-tier candidates end up clumped together in a tiny point range, making it impossible to tell who's actually better than whom.

Now, if you have a test with 20 questions and 20 total points, where those first 5 questions are basically the same as before:
5-8 points = C
9-12 points = B
13-15 points = A-
16-20 points = A+

How does this compare to the first one?
- You still need the same knowledge to pass with a C, except now it's only 25% of the test instead of 50%.
- The amount of time wasted on basic questions is cut down, leaving the rest of the test to actually differentiate between students.
- On a national level, there’s a massive difference between the kids aiming for As and Bs versus those hitting the top marks. A range of 13-20 separates them way better than an 8-10 range ever could.

If the SAT doesn't provide a wide enough scoring range to sort out those getting As and Bs, it becomes useless for college admissions. And once it's useless for colleges, the whole project is dead in the water.

I honestly don't get why people are pushing to turn the SAT into some basic pass/fail thing where you just need a 50% to move on. That would basically make the whole exam useless—if everyone is hitting the same mediocre score, you can't actually rank anyone for those top-tier universities because the scoring range would be way too narrow.

Look, I'm all for having an easier section that proves you've hit the bare minimum requirements to even stay in the running.
But at the same time, you need that brutal, high-level section—the kind where it’s nearly impossible to finish everything perfectly within the time limit. That's the only way to actually separate the geniuses from the rest of the pack.

This info is 15 years old, so take it with a grain of salt, but maybe it'll help you out.
A girl I went to high school with lived in a dorm—four girls to a room. Every morning, they’d do these inspections just to make sure your bed was made properly. And after school, she basically had to head straight back to the dorm if she didn't want to miss lunch, which meant she missed out on all those after-school hangouts at coffee shops. On weekends, she was mostly just traveling back home to her parents.

She didn't really get to experience any actual social life or going out until near the end of high school, when she finally decided to stay in NYC over the weekend and crash at one of her friends' places.