Student Growth An introduction to monitoring student academic progress

Attainment versus Growth Attainment-Status Assessing student academic performance, whether formally with a standardized assessment of informally through observation, involves the the collection of data evidence that is subsequently used to draw an inference about the state of the student’s subject matter understanding (that is, their attainment-status) at that point-in time. Growth-Progress As the words imply, growth-progress captures change in attainment-status over time. When at least two observations of a student’s attainment-status are available, it’s possible to ask the question: Did the student demonstrate academic growth-progress?

Attainment versus Growth • The existence of annual student testing together with unique student identifiers provides multiple assessment observations for individual students and forms the foundation for the calculation of student growth. • Over the last decade, most states including North Carolina have begun calculation of longitudinal student growth using large scale state assessments. • The analysis of student growth is controversial primarily because of the uses to which it is put: Teacher & School Evaluation.

Why Student Growth? If you care about student attainment, then you care about student growth. • Where you are is a function of where you started and how quickly you’ve travelled since. • Student growth and student attainment/achievement are related in this way. • Distance = Rate x Time • Those who start behind tend to stay behind and those that start ahead tend to stay ahead.

Conceptual Understanding • The concept of student growth isn’t as difficult to understand and popular perception suggests. • Calculations may be complicated but knowing how to calculate student growth is not synonymous with understanding student growth: – The number π (pi=3.14159…) is difficult to calculate but is simple to understand conceptually. – Height and weight percentiles associated with children are difficult to calculate but are simple to understand conceptually. • Computational details are important but often obscure a simple conceptual basis.

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts A Math Story Problem • Whose high jump changed more? Explain your answer. • Whose high jump change is more remarkable? Explain your answer. • Which high jumper improved more? Explain your answer.

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts • There are 3 general approaches of calculating student growth: – Growth as an amount of change (i.e., gain). – Growth as a norm/peer referenced quantity. – Growth as a criterion referenced quantity.

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts • Growth as an amount of change: – What could be more simple? – Like height or weight just calculate the amount of change. – Requires a vertical scale (which North Carolina doesn’t have) – Growth = Score Time 2 - Score Time 1 • Not as simple as it seems: – Comparisons between students often leads to wrong conclusions – Interpreting change requires context.

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts Back to the story problem!

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts • Which high jumper improved more: – Judy improved 2 inches. – Anna improved 6 inches. – An inch is an inch!!! – But is an inch really an inch??? – 2 inches for an elite jumper is far more remarkable than 6 inches for a novice.

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts •This is analogous to height/weight measures for infants. •Growth amounts are tricky to interpret and require context. •Peer based comparisons used by growth analyses are a way to acquire that context. An infant male toddler is measured at 2 and 3 years of age and is shown to have grown 4 inches. The magnitude of increase—4 inches—is a well understood quantity that any parent can grasp and calculate at home using a simple yardstick. However, parents leaving their pediatrician’s office knowing only how much their child has grown would likely be wanting for more information: Parents are not interested in an absolute magnitude of growth, but instead in a norm-referenced quantity locating that 4 inch increase alongside the height increases of similar children.

Student Growth: Introductory Concepts • Peer-based analyses are also called norm-referenced analyses. • Like with infant height/weight charts, peers are children/student with similar characteristics. • For growth analyses using large scale assessments, peers are students with (at least) the same scale score history on the same tests. • Peer based norms are invaluable in providing context for stakeholders to understand student growth. • Subtraction isn’t a growth model, even when it’s permitted by a vertical scale.

Student Growth: Accountability • Student growth is contentious largely because it is used as part of school and teacher evaluation. • Much of the contention centers around claims that the quantities derived (usually referred to as teacher of school value-added estimates) isolate the contributions of teachers or schools. • There is not universal consensus over whether such estimates isolate teacher of school contributions. • At a minimum, the teacher and school value-added estimates do describe the average amount of learning demonstrated by students associated with the teacher or school.

About this copy

Student Growth — Growth Literacy, August 2017.

This is an image-based copy of the original Keynote slides; builds and animations are flattened.