Do Math Supervisors Influence PARCC Scores?

Eugen G Tarnow  November 19 2016 09:05:16 AM

By Eugen Tarnow, Ph.D.
Avalon Business Systems, Inc.
http://AvalonAnalytics.com

I have previously written about how difficult it is for a district to get good math teachers (as reflected in the weak correlation between district parental income and PARCC scores).  

This time I asked the question: do math supervisors matter for the PARCC scores?

If they do, then if the math supervisor is good, all the math scores would tend to be good and if the math supervisor is bad, all the math scores would tend to be bad.  In other words, there should be a strong correlation between the math scores of a school district if the math supervisor matters.  If the math supervisor does not matter, the math scores would be correlated with each other no more than with some other subject.

I compared the correlations within the PARCC math scores with the correlations between the PARCC math scores and the NJBCT biology score.  I only included schools with complete scores, see http://njschoolperformance.com.

The result was: no statistical difference between the two.  In other words, biology is as correlated with the math scores as math scores are correlated with each other.

Thus it seems that math supervisors do not influence the PARCC scores.
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