Session 3 — Accountability Growth Methodology Targets

Presenters: Chad Bailey (OEAA) and Jessalyn Smith (Data Recognition Corporation (DRC)) · Day: April 23, 2026

Artifact: TAC Growth Update Deck, April 2026. The agenda scheduled this first, at 9:30am.

The problem OEAA brought

Michigan’s accountability index is overwhelmingly identifying high schools. OEAA does not believe that reflects where the instructional problem actually is.

The mechanism is arithmetic. An Adequate Growth Percentile is the growth a student must sustain to reach proficiency within a set timeframe, and Michigan’s content-area timeframe caps at three years. A grade 11 student has one year left. The same proficiency gap therefore demands a far more aggressive growth target in high school than in elementary school — and ELA shows a bigger average AGP gap than mathematics.

As stated in the room: the current identification “indicates a systemic district instructional problem, but the identification needs to go back to the entire district experience, K-12.” Current research says a school needs five to seven years to meet growth. Michigan gives high school three at most, and grade 11 one.

The model is working as designed. The design is the problem.

Full thread: Adequate Growth Targets.

What was tried and failed

DRC set out to build a model that could produce a grade 12 target from a grade 11 prior, examining the grade 9–11 sequence in both mathematics and ELA, restricted to final SGPs. Predictors SGP 2023 and SGP 2024, outcome SGP 2025. Linear, polynomial, and quantile regression were tried, with main and interaction effects.

None of it fit. In the presenters’ own words, “none of this is great.” Conditioning on performance level had been tried earlier and was “not too promising.” Piecewise modelling was floated, as was predicting a pseudo grade 12 score and running SGPs on it.

Recorded as DRC Grade 12 Projection Explorations.

What OEAA proposed instead

The Nearest Grade Average method, previously used in 2018-19 for the PSAT 8/9 and SAT transition. Rather than modelling each student, it computes an average AGP for a norm group defined by assessment, content area, grade, and prior-year achievement NTILE(50), borrowing from the nearest grade where a full model is estimable. NTILE(50) was chosen so that each bucket averages 1,000 or more R-package AGPs — precision traded for stability.

It lets every high school grade project three years out, the same as elementary and middle. It is slightly less precise than the R SGP package and considerably more precise than the logistic regression method used for MI-Access.

Full thread: Nearest Grade Average Method.

What the committee advised

The committee’s response ran past the method question into what growth targets are for.

The sharpest exchange concerned low-achieving schools. The committee’s position was that for such schools “the norm actually tells you more than the growth,” that the 60th percentile is already adequate for them, and — bluntly — “your job is to get these kids to have more than a year’s worth of learning in a year.” Against OEAA’s reluctance to report raw numbers because they discourage, the committee’s answer was to raise the bar rather than to soften the report.

And underneath: “schools should not be focusing on proficiency; their goal is to produce and maximize growth.”

What blocks it

The AGP as currently defined is written into Michigan’s approved ESSA plan. Changing it requires a plan amendment — a department-wide undertaking. OEAA believes the technical update presented here is within its own authority, but because it touches all grades it would require an announced break in trend.

Full thread: ESSA Plan Constraints.

Open questions

How would OEAA communicate a standard change and break in trend? · Is the impact of NGA on index values desirable?