Calculating Student Success With Credit Score Tools

Education Week:

Editor's note: This article has been truncated. Please read the full story at Education Week.

The use of analytic tools to predict student performance is exploding in higher education, and experts say the tools show even more promise for K-12 schools, in everything from teacher placement to dropout prevention.

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Comments

[lcr999]

04:09 PM on 07/03/2011

I can see the usefulness in detecting trends based on group behavior....i.e. the effects of absenteeism (students and teachers, the effects of holding back, etc. Discerning these controlling factors is the first step in correcting behavior and programs.

The danger would arrive in applying the data to individuals. i.e. this student has a low probablily of graduating so lets get rid of him early....

Predictive analysis tools tell you only about groups not about individuals.

[bwsmith]

12:38 PM on 07/01/2011

These are interesting developments, especially in light of the fact that IQ tests were earlier attempts at "predictive analytics", and have been outlawed by the Supreme Court for their use in employment. Won't many of these newer predictive analytics, if determined to have a disparate impact on different subgroups, be similarly liable to have their use outlawed? I suppose much will depend upon their use by the various educational authorities.

[SoCalifTeacher]

08:55 AM on 07/01/2011

There isn't anything in this article regarding factors affecting student achievement/graduation rates that come as a surprise. Ask kindergarten teachers, they can tell you who is going to make it...or not.

[changing]

09:47 PM on 06/30/2011

And credit scores are so great? Credit scores are discriminatory and arbitrary based on many factors outside of real credit worthiness. Being outlawed from being used for employment and other issues in states already. We have totally lost our minds if we allow these data dictators to control our schools now.

[PixieGirl0731]

09:57 PM on 06/30/2011

The Parents will have to stand up and fight for their kids. We are all doomed I fear.

[lcr999]

04:05 PM on 07/03/2011

Credit scores are a measure of aggregate risk, or rather an estimate of individual risk based on averages. They only "predict" the behavior of groups not individuals, and a that they do well.

[sc1ambition]

09:10 PM on 06/30/2011

All those students need is discipline and self-control.

[PixieGirl0731]

09:56 PM on 06/30/2011

They can write a program to figure that out too.