THE Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) has defended the integrity of its test standards and has outlined the system it uses to score candidates in an effort to quell any belief that it is watering down its exam standards.

Responding to an Observer editorial and story last Thursday, the CXC said “the suggestions and innuendoes in both the article and the editorial strike at the very integrity of the examination and therefore, the council cannot allow such misinformation to prevail”.

The editorial had commented on concerns raised by Math teacher Richard James that the CXC’s CSEC Mathematics examinations have become less and less mentally challenging over the years, even as he expressed pride that his students had done well in this year’s sitting.

Following is the full text of the CXC’s statement:

The Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) is compelled to respond to the editorial in the Jamaica Observer of 26 August 2010 captioned “Answer this one please, CXC.” The editorial is based on an article captioned “Maths is Easy! Pre-eleventh graders sail through CSEC Math with ease” also published in the Jamaica Observer on the said date.

The suggestions and innuendoes in both the article and the editorial strike at the very integrity of the examination and therefore, the council cannot allow such misinformation to prevail.

The council therefore wishes to use empirical evidence to state the following, which will put to rest any notion of a dumbing down of its examination standards.

1) The council uses the Criterion Reference System of assessment, that is, a standard for each grade is set when the examination paper is prepared and only candidates who achieve this standard are awarded the grade. The council does not use the Norm Reference System, commonly referred to as the Bell Curve, in which a candidate’s grade is determined by the performance of the entire examination population. The council is therefore confident that the grade each candidate is awarded reflects his/or true achievement.

2) An analysis of the content and objectives tested in the Mathematics papers in May 2006, 2008 and 2010 are very similar and were determined and constructed using the same table of specifications.

3) Paper 01’s for the three years (2006, 2008 and 2010) have very similar means, standard deviation and reliability coefficients.

4) The profiles of the 12 equating items (used for equating performance of candidates of May 2010 with performance of candidates of May 2008 are parallel and differed at most by 0.03.

5) These Paper 01s as designed, constructed and refined by CXC displayed excellent stability over the three periods and also held the expected relations among the different clusters of mathematical traits measured by Paper 01 and Paper 02.

6) The topics examined in Paper 02 for May 2006, 2008 and 2010 are the same.

7) In the Paper 02 for each of these years, the tasks presented to the candidate were constructed using similar formats, similar structures and similar word and mathematical jargon. A task analysis methodology was used to identify the underlying skills and knowledge to be tested.

8) Finally, the Council has always made itself readily available when requested by the media and is therefore disappointed that the newspaper did not seek its response prior to the publication of the article so as to bring balance to the issue.

Editor’s note: The Observer did seek to get a comment from the CXC’s pro-registrar in Jamaica, Glenroy Cumberbatch, as was clearly stated in our story headlined ‘Tutor says CSEC Math too easy’. Mr Cumberbatch’s office took the e-mail address and queries of Editor-at-Large Pat Roxborough-Wright and promised to forward them to him.