Now, for those of you who are not from NZ, this is a stressful time for parents of teenagers. The NCEA results are out. Kids sit these every year in senior school, and the system crashed, we forgot our password, and the results were good, but not as good as expected.
The variability I saw piqued my curiosity. There are only four grades, and all exams are unreliable. This means that there is a huge element of luck
When this margin is applied to a cut-off point or grade boundary, the level of achievement of the student is between 12.6% above and below the cut-off point or grade boundary. When the assessment is short and the evidence is limited as it is for a single achievement standard, this range can more than double and a mark of 50% can be interpreted as somewhere between 25% and 75%. The margin compounds when the reliability estimate is less than 0.8, increasing the standard error of measurement, meaning that a student awarded merit could equally have been awarded ‘achieved’ or ‘excellence’.
Now, there are ways around this. Cut down the number of assessments, and make them longer. NCEA, is for teenage kids, a high stake exam. But the reliability is too low. As a means of streaming people, NCEA is poor. The consequence is that the real high stakes test is in first year university, where more able students compete to enter courses such as law, medicine and engineering.
How does this fit with the text? In one way: you have to do as well as you can preparing for the exam — given its unreliability — so you load the die in your favour. The friends of a crippled man took this to an extreme.
1When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. 3Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. 5When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” 6Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7“Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 8At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 9Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? 10But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — he said to the paralytic — 11“I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” 12And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Jesus talked about his salvation first. Not about being healed. This was not expected: the men expected jesus to heal their friend.
I must confess I always wonder who repaired the roof.
But Jesus was able to heal, and did.
God is faithful, God keeps his promises. Not our governments, nor our educational systems.
This does not mean that we need not. My son still did well — because during the year he managed to get good marks. The most prepared entered the examinations with an extremely high grade point average — which meant that the exams could not remove their year achievement from them.
For in the end, we, flawed, unreliable, are the hands of Christ for this generation. We need to do what we can to be in the place where Christ can use us.
