The Null Hypothesis in this case would be that there was no statistically significant difference between each ethnic group of students' test scores. If the P-value is less than 5 % (0.05), it signifies that there is a statistically significant difference in their performances and we must reject the Null Hypothesis.
This means that if we were to do these exams again, all things being equal, we would get the same results. The differences would not be from chance or from an error in the measurement of their reading performance. I think people need to understand that when you are measuring values, you are just measuring numbers and how the numbers relate to each other. This does not answer the question of WHY there is a difference.
Below is the comparison between White and Black students. The P-values are shown to be zero which is less that 5%. This means that the difference between the values recorded for the two ethnic groups were statistically significant and could not be attributed to chance or an error in measurement.
The next two charts show the same results for White/Hispanic comparisons and Black/Hispanic comparisons. The difference between the reading performances recorded for White and Hispanic and the difference between the reading performances recorded for Black and Hispanic students was statistically significant. The difference in their scores was not due to error or chance.
I had always used Excel at work but never used the formula functions. My husband is an engineer and he said he used the functions often to let Excel "do the math" for him. I plan on teaching Middle School Science so this is a useful tool to use and introduce to students.
In the SAMR model, this tool is an augmentation that substitutes for what we used to have to do by hand or with a calculator when conducting experiments. This Excel tool definitely enhances the final product (looks professional) and the improvement is the speed. Excel saves us time!
If students want to go into the STEM fields, they will need to know how to use this tool (ISTE NETS, IB). The tool is also useful for teachers especially if we conduct our own studies of student performance in the classroom (ISTE NETS, IVB).
I did find out that you can reference a blog post in APA style. For this post, it would look like this in the text (PMcBride, 2015). The reference section would look like this:
PMcBride. (2015, February 10). Hypothesis Testing [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://phyllismcbride.blogspot.com/.
If you are going to reference data from a table or graph in another publication, you have to be sure to put the page number where the table is located.
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