: Graphs, Tables and Maps 1999

Key Examples from Map Key

New Zealand's National Education Monitoring Project commenced in 1993, with the task of assessing and reporting on the achievement of New Zealand primary school children in all areas of the school curriculum. Children are assessed at two class levels: Year 4 (halfway through primary education) and Year 8 (at the end of primary education). Different curriculum areas and skills are assessed each year, over a four year cycle. The main goal of national monitoring is to provide detailed information about what children can do so that patterns of performance can be recognised, successes celebrated, and desirable changes to educational practices and resources identified and implemented.

Each year, small random samples of children are selected nationally, then assessed in their own schools by teachers specially seconded and trained for this work. Task instructions are given orally by teachers, through video presentations, on laptop computers, or in writing. Many of the assessment tasks involve the children in the use of equipment and supplies. Their responses are presented orally, by demonstration, in writing, in computer files, or through submission of other physical products. Many of the responses are recorded on videotape for subsequent analysis.

The use of many tasks with both year 4 and year 8 students allows comparisons of the performance of year 4 and 8 students in 1999. Because some tasks have now been used twice, in 1995 and again in 1999, trends in performance across the four year period can also be analysed.

In 1999, the first year of the second cycle of national monitoring, three areas were assessed: science, art, and the use of graphs, tables and maps. This report presents details and results of the assessments of students' skills in the use of graphs, tables and maps. Understanding and using information presented in the form of graphs, tables or maps is an important part of everyday life in our community. This report highlights two aspects of the use of graphs, tables and maps: extracting and interpreting information, and organising and presenting information.

Interpreting of Graphs, Tables and Maps focuses on extracting and interpreting information from a wide variety of graphs, tables and maps. Averaged across 63 task components used with both year 4 and year 8 students, 80 percent of year 8 students produced correct responses compared to 60 percent of year 4 students. This indicates that, on average, students have made substantial progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills assessed by the tasks. More than one third of the task components were answered successfully by at least 90 percent of year 8 students. It is reassuring to note that some of the largest differences between year 4 and year 8 students occurred with line graphs, which are generally not taught until after year 4.

Six trend tasks involving 19 task components were administered to year 4 students in both the 1995 and 1999 assessments. Averaged across all 19 components, 3 percent more students succeeded in 1999 than in 1995. This indicates a small improvement in performance for year 4 students over the four year period. Eight trend tasks involving 32 task components were administered to year 8 students in both the 1995 and 1999 assessments. Averaged across all 32 components, 2 percent fewer students succeeded in 1999 than in 1995. This indicates a very small decline in performance for year 8 students over the four year period.

The focus is Constructing or completing graphs, tables and maps. Averaged across 33 task components used with both year 4 and year 8 students, 87 percent of year 8 students produced correct responses compared to 62 percent of year 4 students. This indicates that, on average, students have made substantial progress between year 4 and year 8 in the skills assessed by the tasks. More than half of these task components were answered successfully by at least 90 percent of year 8 students. Students at both levels were least successful in providing titles and appropriate labels for axes and values, seeming to believe that it was sufficient to display the data.

Three trend tasks involving a total of 11 components were administered to year 4 students in both the 1995 and 1999 assessments. Averaged across the 11 components, 12 percent more students succeeded in 1999 than in 1995. Most of this substantial gain was due to a large improvement on one task, Subject Pie (p39), with 27 percent more year 4 students succeeding in 1999 than in 1995. This could suggest that a substantial change in the timing of instruction about pie graphs has occurred between 1995 and 1999. Two trend tasks involving nine task components were administered to year 8 students in both the 1995 and 1999 assessments. Averaged across the 9 components, the success rate for year 8 students was unchanged between 1995 and 1999.

Performance of Subgroups reports the results of analyses that compared the performance of different demographic subgroups. School type (full primary or intermediate), school size, community size, geographic zone and student gender did not seem to be important factors predicting achievement on the graphs, tables and maps tasks. The other four factors revealed more substantial differences. Non-Mäori students outperformed Mäori students on 33 percent of the tasks at year 4 level and 42 percent of the tasks at year 8 level. Students attending schools with high proportions of Mäori students performed worse than students attending other schools on 24 percent of the tasks at year 4 level and 39 percent of the tasks at year 8 level. Students attending schools with more than five percent Pacific Island students performed worse than students at other schools on about 50 percent of the tasks at both year levels. Most notably, there were statistically significant differences in the performances of students from low, medium and high decile schools on 52 percent of the year 4 tasks and 84 percent of the year 8 tasks.

Pacific Island Student Sample reports the results of analyses of the achievement of Pacific Island students. Until this year, there have been too few Pacific Island students in the National Monitoring samples to allow their results to be separately analysed and reported. Starting this year, additional sampling of schools with high proportions of Pacific Island students permits comparison of the achievement of Pacific Island, Mäori and other children attending such schools. Year 4 Pacific Island students were outperformed by the "other" students on 58 percent of the tasks, and by the Mäori students on 6 percent of the tasks. They did not perform better than either group on any task. Year 8 Pacific Island students were outperformed by the "other" students on 53 percent of the tasks, and by the Mäori students on 5 percent of the tasks. However, the Pacific Island students performed better than the Mäori students on one task.