***October 2013 - Physics***

riffed
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 16:35:28 +0000

They could know from records that October test takers have always been strong, so they could guess with reasonable accuracy how strong the October test takers this year will probably be, hence affecting the curve.



Read what PieofApples said above. The purpose of “equating” (aka setting the curve) is to make it so that someone would get the same/a similar score across different versions of the test. It’s not about ensuring that x% scores above a certain score. So, if they decide to make a test with an unusually high amount of difficult questions, the curve would be adjusted accordingly–it has nothing to do with them extrapolating about which date has “stronger” students taking the test in order to ensure that the same % of students score in a certain range each time.