Reply to Accelerated Education in MCPS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

NP (on this thread at least).  Does GT &gt; 90th pctile refer to the 90 pctile [b]nationally[/b]? Is this how we get in such a pickle with 40% of MCPS students being at or above the 90th pctile nationally?

To the other poster, &gt;90pctile would increase 98th pctile, by definition.

[/quote]

I guess you miss understood that sentence by the PP. What it meant the kids who are identified as GT include the ones at &gt; 90%tile. It did not mean GT in Montgomery county is equal to &gt;90th %tile. Anyway, this %tile reference are for MoCo students only not for national comparison.[/quote]

No, I didn't misunderstand the sentence. I do econometrics (i.e., lots and lots of stats) for a living. What I am asking is, what sample does the 90th pctile come from? Is this the 90th pctile (and above) for all kids in MoCo, or is it 90th pctile for all kids in the nation?  I think your second sentence may be answering my question, but it's not clear you understand the issue here.

What I'm trying to get at is an answer to this question: if MoCo administers a test and says that any kid who scores in the 90th percentile or above is "GT", how do we end up with a situation where MoCo labels 40% of kids as being "GT"? By definition, the 90th pctile kid is in the top 10%, not in the top 40%. So there is a definitional problem somewhere. from Wikipedia:  "In statistics, a percentile (or centile) is the value of a variable below which a certain percent of observations fall. For example, the 20th percentile is the value (or score) below which 20 percent of the observations may be found."  That's what I'm trying to pin down.

It would make sense if MoCo kids were often above the national average, so that 40% of MoCo kids were in the top 10% nationally. But that was just one guess. Maybe there's another explanation.

(And BTW, I have to laugh at "I guess you miss understood the sentence."  Can't we try a little, teensy bit harder to be nice to each other? I know some of you guys frequent the GTA forum, but really!)[/quote]

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