The NC EMPT approach is to encourage public and non-public high school students, through testing registration by their mathematics teachers, to take the NC EMPT test as they near completion of Algebra II, (and now Common Core Math III), and again, if possible, while enrolled in any upper-level mathematics course.
As recommended by Complete College America (2012), NC EMPT participation allows students "a practice test and time to brush up on their skills" before taking an actual college mathematics placement test.
One of the major goals of the NC EMPT Program is to help reduce the percentage of entering freshmen that require expensive mathematics remediation at the college level.
The purpose of this study is to examine and assess the viability of the NC EMPT as an early warning indicator of college performance by studying the mathematical performance and six year graduation rates of former high school NC EMPT test-takers once they enter one of the UNC constituent universities.
For this study, the 2001-2004 data was matched to University of North Carolina General Administration (UNC-GA) records in order to ascertain the performance of NC EMPT participants who moved on to a university in the UNC system.
These social security numbers provided the only available link in data between NC EMPT and UNC-GA.
The college-level data was matched to the NC EMPT data to gain overall scores and item-by-item scores.
Therefore, we are left with 3566 students who completed the NC EMPT test and began their freshman year at ECU.
Statistical analysis of the current data consists of a mixture of t-tests to examine quantitative measures between those that do and do not pass the NC EMPT and Fisher's Exact Tests to compare categorical outcomes between the two groups.