IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/nzecpp/v53y2019i1p89-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using validated measures of high school academic achievement to predict university success

Author

Listed:
  • Kamakshi Singh
  • Tim Maloney

Abstract

Administrative data from a New Zealand university are used to validate the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) Rank Score used in university admissions and scholarship decisions. We find no statistical evidence to corroborate the specific weighting scheme used in this index. For example, our regression analysis suggests that too much weight is attached to the lowest category of credits in predicting both successful completion outcomes and letter grades. To show the potential importance of this validated measure of high school achievement, we run several simulations on these first-year student outcomes at this university. We show that the use of an alternative, empirically-validated measure of NCEA results to select students would lead to only slight improvements in course completion rates and letter grades. These higher entry standards would lead to declines in the proportions of Pacifica students, but minimal impacts on the proportion of Māori students enrolled at this university.

Suggested Citation

  • Kamakshi Singh & Tim Maloney, 2019. "Using validated measures of high school academic achievement to predict university success," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(1), pages 89-106, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:53:y:2019:i:1:p:89-106
    DOI: 10.1080/00779954.2017.1419502
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00779954.2017.1419502
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00779954.2017.1419502?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matilde Reséndiz-Castro & Rosalba Zepeda-Bautista & Ignacio Enrique Peón-Escalante, 2022. "Transdisciplinary Cyber-systemic Design of Instruments to Measure Academic Performance in Middle and Higher Education Systems," Systemic Practice and Action Research, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 395-440, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:53:y:2019:i:1:p:89-106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RNZP20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.