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ECD/Exercise 1 Tutoring Decision

Problem

Consider a school district making a decision about whether or not to place a child into a tutoring program. The school councilor has the following options available:

Place the child in the mainstream classroom as the baseline cost.
Place the child in a one-on-one tutoring program that cost ten times the baseline cost.

Before making the decision the school councilor can administer one of the following tests:

Ask the teacher about their impressions of the student. There is a considerable amount of variability in the way the different teachers at the school evaluate the children; however, this test is relatively inexpensive.
Use a detailed diagnostic assessment that costs one hundred dollars to administer and requires the student to miss 3 hours of class time.

What is the best "policy" (rule for selecting a test and a placement option based on test results)?

Discussion

RGA The problem here is that the set of possible options is impoverished. There one-on-one tutoring system is only really optimal in rare cases, so the teacher judgments are good enough for this purpose.

The lesson is that a diagnostic assessment must be aligned to the set of remedial options available to the educator. If not, it won't have much value in the decision making process.