Bummer Of A Test

I have a class with 20 students. 18 of them showed up for the midterm tonight. 1 of them is making up the midterm in a few days. I don’t know where the last one is. It’s an objective test, all true-false and multiple choice. The average score was 59.9% correct. Only one of the midterms is at an acceptable grade level, a “C.” Nine are “D” grades and the other 8 are “F.”

Of the 50 questions on the midterm, only four produced answers that the students, as a whole, got correct less than the amount chance would have indicated (4.5 correct answers for the multiple choice, 9 correct answers for the true-false). So that means that the wrong answers were spread out all over the place.

It makes me wonder if I’ve failed as a teacher. These are adults of at least average intelligence, many of whom ask good questions in class that show they understand what’s going on with the subject matter. This is a big time bummer for me.