"Throwing Out" questions on a test

[DawnJ]

I was surprised to see how many questions are "thrown out" on our nursing and pharm tests. If the class doesn't do well, the teacher looks at which questions were missed by the most students and will add that many points to everyone's score.

I can understand if a question is poorly worded or was not covered in the materials, but excluding it because a large percentage of the students missed it?

Do you see this in your programs? I'm suspicious it is a way of inflating the grades when a class overall isn't cutting it.

[daniellenursing]

My teachers do stastitical analysis of every test for both campuses in the program, and do further review of questions as a faculty when the percentage of answering correctly is below a certain percentage - like, 40% as a whole. It doesn't mean we will get back the points. And even if someone got it right, the whole class gets the point back for a question they throw out. But they do feel and watch which questions get the lowest scores and which were fair questions and which weren't. Even with points back, people have failed theory. In my program, you have to get a 75% or higher for the test section - you have to get 75% average out of all the tests taken. So you could pass one test with flying colors, and fail another, and still keep your average above 75%. Even with points back, people don't always pass.

There are bad questions. Sometimes I think ATI proctored tests have bad questions... lol. My program takes from a bank of questions for each test, and sometimes rewords questions or switches their format from year to year to prepare us better for the NCLEX. Select all that Apply are becoming very popular, and we gotta learn to take them. Which is why my class and future classes is less likely to have the SATA thrown out.

I wouldn't say it inflates us or our egos. My class strives for the best. We have test reviews and go over what we missed - totally optional, of course.

[Kimynurse]

They don't in my RN program

They did on LPN

Your grade never went down, but you didn't get extra points. If you got 100 they threw out 2 questions still 100

[ChrisMarie09]

My professors do a statistical analysis. They way it works is if more than 50% of us missed it, they look at who missed it, then if it's a case of across the board people who missed 1 question or people who missed 20, they remove the question like it was never there for everyone and the total number of questions goes down. We just had a med-surg exam with 65 questions, our grades were out of 62.

[ComeTogether, LPN]

My professors do a statistical analysis. They way it works is if more than 50% of us missed it, they look at who missed it, then if it's a case of across the board people who missed 1 question or people who missed 20, they remove the question like it was never there for everyone and the total number of questions goes down. We just had a med-surg exam with 65 questions, our grades were out of 62.

I know this is an old thread, but my professors do this and it irritates me because often times I get the question right and don't get credit for it and the ones I got wrong are penalized for more points.

[NurseYoungGuns]

Our teachers will throw out questions but only after they've investigated into who got the question wrong or right. If the top scorers for the test got it right, then it's a good question. If everyone got it wrong including the top scorers then usually it's thrown out because it was worded wrong or not covered. I don't disagree with the practice of throwing out questions. Sometimes our professors make mistakes when they write the test and it becomes obvious that they need to give us points for it if they are willing to review the questions and analyze our grades.

[vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN]

I know this is an old thread, but my professors do this and it irritates me because often times I get the question right and don't get credit for it and the ones I got wrong are penalized for more points.

I'd be ticked off if my schools did this. Instead, what my profs do, is after the statistical analysis, they simply make the entire test out of a lower total number of questions, therefore everyone benefits. Thank goodness for my fair professors!!