The Study of National Assessment of Educational Achievement in Elementary Mathematics in 2001

2001년도 국가수준의 초등학교 수학과 교육성취도 평가 연구

The goal of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement(NAEA) 2001 was to affirm the accountability of school education, to scientifically manage and elevate the quality of education at the national level, and to articulate the final design of the NAEA. It was implemented on June 28th of the year 2001. The assessment frame for NAEA includes the achievement standards, the assessment standards, the instruction for the item development, and the grading policy for mathematics subject. Most of items are multiple-choice types, but the performance-based items should be at least thirty percent of the total items, also 30% in case of mathematics. Approximately 1% of students among entire population of the Grades 6 were randomly selected. Therefore, the finally sampled examines were 8023 at Grade 6. The result of the analysis of the NAEA revealed that Grade 6 students was labelled as ‘average’ level in general (Number and Operation: average, Geometric figures: average, Patterns and Functions: excellent, Measurements: average, Letters and Expressions: average, Probability and Statistics: average). The most characteristic finding was that except for Grade 6(its average is 69.92), most secondary students obtained low test scores and its average of each grade is below 50 out of 100. Especially, the scores on the performance-based items were by and large very low. This finding implies that Korean students are not familiar with the kind of test items which requires expression of ideas and feelings and they are rather familiar with the multiple-choice items. Another interesting finding was that the students in small towns and remote areas showed significantly low scores in all four skills compared with Seoul, metropolitan cities and medium and small cities. This may be attributed from the fact that the remote areas do not have equal learning environment with regard to social and cultural experience, supply of various teaching materials, extracurricular lessons which are directly related to teaching and learning. These findings may be utilized as a reliable resource fur improving curriculum and teaching and learning in Mathematics.