Our Research Talent proposal titled “How to hedge our bets in educational testing: combining test results with teacher expertise” has been granted by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific research. Kimberley Lek will work on this project for the next 4 years.

Summary of the proposed research
In the Netherlands, educational testing is heatedly debated. In specific, there is disagreement whether to use objective test results or expert knowledge (i.e., teacher expertise) for many school-track related decisions. To prevent placing one’s ‘bet’ on either test results or teacher expertise, we propose hedging our bets using a Bayesian methodology that bases judgements on the ability of children on both teacher expertise and test results. The Cito-LVS and WISC-III IQ-test are used as case studies to provide a strong test and potential demonstration of the advantages and pitfalls of the Bayesian method in educational testing.