Outperformers

Academic Performance

The CognitiveGenesis study set out to answer these two related questions:

1. How well are students doing academically in the Adventist school system?
2. How does academic performance in Adventist schools compare to academic performance in public schools and other private schools?

Standardized Iowa achievement tests provided data about the students, but context and meaning would come from a comparison group.

The researchers selected the 2005 national norm group for comparison which included students from public schools (90%), Catholic schools (5%) and private non-Catholic schools (5%).

In the results show here, the 50th percentile is the national average. Anything above this represents above average academic achievement.

RESULTS BY GRADE
percentile ranking

RESULTS BY SUBJECT 
percentile ranking

Overachievers

Academic Achievement

In addition to using achievement tests to see how well students in Adventist schools were acquiring knowledge, the CognitiveGenesis study used ability tests (also called aptitude tests) to assess how well students could think and reason in such areas as verbal skills, comprehension and problem solving.

There’s a correlation between ability and achievement tests. With a fair degree of accuracy, the results of aptitude tests can be used to predict how well students will do on achievement tests. However, when the CognitiveGenesis researchers compared the predictions against actual achievement scores, they were in for a surprise. Students in Adventist schools were consistently doing better academically than had been predicted. They were overachievers in the best sense of the word.

ACHIEVEMENT BY LEVEL 
by ability level

Ability test scores were used to divide students in Adventist schools into four groups (left column) based on their aptitude. Actual achievement scores were significantly higher than predicted (right column).