Work Sample 

Students invited into the selection process received a letter like the one below describing the work sample, one element of the evaluation criteria.

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Parents, students and teachers made efforts to collect work samples to submit into the process.  Ultimately, it was a useless criteria.  A FOIL request confirmed that all students received a 4 out of 4 on this criteria.  It has no value in the selection process because it has no differentiation among students.  See the source document here.

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Ultimately, this was a useless metric which caused parents, students and teachers stress to create and submit. 

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Challenges with this selection criteria include:

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• Students were invited to submit work prepared at home, with the help of parents and tutors, not a "classroom work sample." This is inequitable.  The Board approved policy was for a "classroom work sample." This criteria was tainted as it may not reflect student work. 
   

• There is no "standard" way to compare the many different samples that might be submitted. 

  • What counts as a work sample?​

  • How do you compare and evaluate vastly different samples such as 1) completing a single challenging math problem, 2) a project done in a math camp with supervision or 3) a top score on a unit test?

  • How do you compare something completed in school to something completed at home?
     

• It was unclear whether the submission of a work sample was required. The invitation letter stated that a student "may wish to submit" and that "This is NOT mandatory."  Yet if nothing was submitted, the student received a '1' in the rubric, making it difficult to accrue the 16 points required for admission.

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