Proposed Growth Analyses in 2021
Damian Betebenner
Illinois TAC Webinar
January 21st, 2021
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SGP Growth Analyses 2021
With the 2021 assessment situation becoming (slightly)
clearer here are current plans for 2021 growth:
• Skip year (2019 to 2021) growth will be calculated at both the
state and consortium level.
• Approximately 80,000 students in IL testing in 2020, growth
from 2020 to 2021 will be calculated
• Both cohort (2019 to 2021) and baseline (using 2017 to 2019
growth) referenced growth will be calculated for all students
with suitable data.
March 31-April 1: RILS 2020 Staff Sharing 2
Using Growth to Assess Learning Loss
• Previous analyses comparing skip-year to annual growth were intended to
inform use for traditional accountability purposes.
• As mentioned in earlier presentations, there are other (better) uses of
growth beyond traditional accountability in 2021.
• Understanding student learning loss is one of those uses.
• Baseline referenced growth will allow IL to investigate student learning loss.
• Overall: Baseline referenced SGPs have a median of 50 for historical (i.e., 2019) results.
Deviation (below) 50 in 2021 will allow IL to determine the extent of learning loss
statewide, by district, school, and student group.
• Differential impact: Differences between traditional demographic subgroups as well as
COVID-19 subgroups (in person/hybrid/remote learning).
• Note that because both cohort and baseline SGPs will be produced both
accountability (if it happens) and learning loss will be supported
March 31-April 1: RILS 2020 Staff Sharing 3
Using Growth to Assess Learning Loss
Precautions associated with learning loss interpretation
• Use of baseline SGP imply that the 2021 results are on the same scale as the 2019
results. Pearson will work hard to ensure that.
• 2020 to 2021 growth results will help validate learning loss results for 2019 to
• Participation rates will likely be lower than in previous years leaving “holes” in the
data for some districts and schools.
• These holes will have less an impact on growth results than on status results
because growth is uncorrelated with prior achievement.
• At present, we think learning loss for those districts/schools with “holes” can be
estimated using whatever 2021 student growth data is available together with
some technique like propensity score matching at the district/school level.
• Again, this isn’t meant to be used for “big A” accountability
March 31-April 1: RILS 2020 Staff Sharing 4
Using Growth to Assess Learning Loss
Current efforts
• Our goal (working with Pearson) is to have all preliminary work on
learning loss (e.g., baseline matrix construction) done prior to the
arrival of data (preliminary data usually arrives in June).
• Create learning loss reports for state in addition to traditional SGP
reports.
• Turn around reports to states as fast as possible (hopefully 24 to 48
hours) so that data is actionable for Fall 2021.
• NOTE: IL being a WIDA-ACCESS state can also perform learning loss
analyses with those data to support results derived from the IAR.
March 31-April 1: RILS 2020 Staff Sharing 5
About this copy
Proposed Growth Analyses in 2021 — Illinois Technical Advisory Committee, January 21, 2021.
This is an image-based copy of the original PowerPoint slides; builds and animations are flattened.