Growth measures for, systemic change: through periodic learning assessments, you can analyze which instructional programs are most effective, make student groupings and reallocate resources to areas of need

School Administrator, Jan, 2007 by Allan Olson

Educators are becoming more aware of the limitations of testing that simply measures student achievement at a single point in time, such as benchmark tests, locally constructed formative tests, conventional standardized tests, and state assessments used to determine adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind.

Not surprisingly, school administrators are implementing assessments to measure individual student growth during the school year and from year to year. In states like South Carolina, Indiana and Minnesota, anywhere between 60 and 90 percent of the school districts statewide are using a formative assessment based on growth measures to make informed decisions about each student's education.

Accurate measures, combined with a vertical measurement scale, have provided an opportunity never before available to K-12 educational settings. Now not only do educators understand how their students are performing at one point of time, they can quickly see how much students have grown from quarter to quarter or from one year to the next. As a result, educators can understand and influence growth for all students, regardless of achievement status, age and class groupings. Likewise, growth measures point to how student achievement is aligned with district or state-defined content standards while ensuring instruction challenges each student appropriately.

The principal question is how growth data might be used to continuously improve the effectiveness of educational systems. Can we focus more clearly on each job function within a school district in ways that align those functions to improve student learning?

Access to accurate student growth data informs a wealth of decision making, including program and teacher effectiveness, the ability to challenge all students given their status, adequacy of instructional programs or resources, school staffing and scheduling, as well as the impact of environmental factors, such as bus schedules and classroom materials. With the use of accurate measures and timely access to the analysis of school/district progress, schools now can determine the amount and nature of academic growth that each student needs and then organize themselves to accomplish these learning goals.

Gauging Changes

At the most fundamental level, a growth measure provides educators a quantifiable way to gauge the difference in scores for a single student from one point in time to another. By comparison, the achievement level is the score that a student has at a fixed point in time, such as a standardized test score. The quality of a growth measure, however, depends on the integrity of the testing methodology and measurement scale.

Northwest Evaluation Association, a national nonprofit organization providing research-based assessments, has championed the use of computerized adaptive testing to measure growth in student achievement as the foundation for the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP. It now is used by more than 2,200 districts nationwide.

MAP reports achievement on a RIT (Rasch Unit) scale, an equal-interval vertical measurement scale that enables educators to measure growth independent of grade level and to evaluate and compare performance data across years. The RIT is infinite, although most students' scores fall between the values of 140 and 300. The scale is equal-interval, meaning the distance between 170 and 182 is the same as the distance between 240 and 252. This allows educators to apply simple mathematical equations to the scores to determine the mean and median scores in a class or grade.

RIT scores are used by teachers to plan instruction around students' strengths and weaknesses relative to state curriculum standards. Educators can choose curricula that are aligned with NWEA's Continuum of Learning, and therefore it becomes easier to place students in well-targeted, differentiated instruction, which leads to improved performance and growth.

The aggregated results from periodic assessments, ideally implemented at nine-week intervals, provide a wealth of information for administrators. In an analysis of instructional programs, educators can use growth data to determine the effectiveness of one instructional program over another, make decisions about the groupings of children given their current achievement levels and instructional needs and reallocate instructional resources. Likewise, it is possible to see whether programs are adequately effective for all disaggregated groups of students or perhaps just one subgroup.

With an analysis of school data, juxtaposed to a virtual comparison group of like students and districts, administrators can make informed, objective decisions about teacher, counselor and staff performance. Tough questions about teacher preparedness, school staffing levels and student/teacher assignments can be addressed objectively.

Virtual Comparisons

The National Heritage Academies, which operate 53 public charter schools in five states, including Indiana, Michigan, New York, North Carolina and Ohio, is an example of an organization using the NWEA virtual comparison group reports. The academy schools began using MAP growth measures in all of its schools in 2003. Individual student scores demonstrate how each student is progressing and learning over time, and these scores provide teachers with guidance on where to place students in the curricula and how to adjust instruction based on student needs.