Quote:
Originally Posted by John
Do you have any data on the scores before FRC? Could the presence of FRC not be the cause of this correlation, instead could the correlation be the result of schools that were already committed to Science (and therefore likely to have better test scores anyway) being more likely to start FRC teams. This would seem especially likely if the scores have not changed much since the teams were started. Though if you can show the scores went up since then your point makes more sense.
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Unfortunately, the statistics available from WA OSPI were not as thorough back then. The Titan Robotics team (492) was formed in the 2000-2001 school year. Newport (948) and Bellevue (949) started competing in 2002.
The first year that a standardized science test was administered was in the 2002-2003 school year; 492 was in their 3rd competition season by the time the test was administered, and 948/949 were in the 2nd competition season, if I'm not mistaking. At the time, 1899 (Interlake) and 2412 (Sammamish) did not exist.
Code:
Team # | 492* | 948 | 949 | 1899* | 2412
2003 Science Scores | 62.9% | 70.5% | 60.4% | 52.0% | 47.4%
2010 Science Scores | 92.3% | 80.1% | 74.9% | 69.1% | 51.4%
d(scores) | 29.4% | 9.6% | 14.5% | 17.1% | 4.0%
d(scores)/year** | 2.67% | 1.07% | 1.61% | 2.44% | 0.8%
*The Bellevue School District is an awfully inaccurate school district to examine for two reasons.
First, International School (492) has a student enrollment system different from the other schools. It is done by lottery, and very academia-focused (i.e. no school sports, few extracurriculars, etc.) Moreover, the school spans from 6th to 12th grade, meaning that students get 3 years' more exposure to the clubs in the school than they otherwise would at a traditional 4-year senior high school.
Second, Interlake High School (1899) adopted an accelerated program in the 2006-2007 school year (2nd year of 1899 in FRC) as a continuation of the middle school program. Many gifted students that otherwise would've been at 948, 949, and 2412's schools are attending Interlake. The subsequent inflation of test scores makes statistics for 1899 a clear outlier.
**The change in scores per year of FRC team existence is the absolute change in percentage points, not a measure of the rate of growth/improvement on tests.
However, these statistics are enough to draw a few conclusions.
For one, the correlation between 2003 test scores and the presence of FRC teams is very weak; in fact, 948's school had stronger test scores than 492's school. However, by 2010 there clearly has been a drastic change in performance, and every school saw growth. In other words, FRC magnifies academic performance.
Second, the change in test scores is not a linear function. More veteran teams that have a stronger presence in the school will have a greater impact for a given duration of time (i.e. year to year) than will a newer team.
Further extensions: demographic constituency, team size/percentage of school population, mentor number/mentor:student ratio, economic status (as measured by free/reduced lunch qualification), among others. This is the project devised for my internship at FIRSTWA, and I will be mining more thorough data on teams across the entire state of Washington. Once I have better data to back up more sophisticated conclusions later in the year, I'll be sure to post them or publish a white paper or something.