Freaky Reliability

  Reliability is a very important, though often overlooked aspect of teaching. Reliability ensures that when students are given assignments, the assignments are accurate- meaning free from bias and able to be replicated. Strong reliability also helps assessment reliability.

An example of the importance of reliability comes from one of my favorite movies- Freaky Friday. In that movie, Anna’s teacher, Mr. Bates, is seen as unfair, which we later find out is because of her mom not going out with him in high school.  However, his unfair teaching and grading practices indicate that at the core, his assessments are unreliable. 

There are many signs of his unreliable assessments throughout the movie.  First (and again, a very overlooked aspect of reliability), is the fact that he is the only scorer for his students. Yes, he is the teacher, but it is obvious that him being the only person to rate his students’ performance leads to bias in his grading. For example, when he gives a pop quiz in class (which has its own reliability issues to be discussed later), he calls on one other student before Anna. The student struggles to give an answer, by Mr. Bates guides him, by basically giving him the correct answer, and just letting him agree to get a B. Then, it is Anna’s turn. She gives a thorough answer for his question, but in his opinion it was a stretch, so she was given an F. 

This example highlights the importance of different raters, or graders on assessments. When approached by Anna, Mr. Bates asserts that grading is subjective, but that should be farther from the truth. The purpose of using more than one graders on an assignment is to eliminate any potential bias, such as the bias Mr. Bates has for Anna.  These different graders could be teammates fro the same grader or subject. If there are drastic differences, perhaps the assessment is not reliable, or the raters need to reconcile differences. As seen in the movie, rater bias can really affect student grades, so it is really important to consider when thinking of the reliability of  an assessment. 

As brought up before, Mr. Bates’ pop quiz brings up more reliability issues beyond the grader.  First, the pop quiz was one question, presented on the spot and done verbally in front of the class. This is a big problem for many reasons. First, one question does not give a good measurement of what the student does or does not know.  Multiple questions that measure the same standard is important to make sure that it is reliable. 

Additionally, providing the students the question in front of the class with no time to think does not give the students the time or opportunity to present their knowledge.  Saying the answer in front of peers creates added stress, which effects their thinking, and the lack of time does not give them the opportunity to thoroughly think through their answer. 

Overall, Mr. Bates in Freaky Friday presents an example of the importance of a reliable assessment. It is essential that students are graded in an consistent matter, and that assessments produce grades that are reliable.