ecra local growth model

Local Growth Models for Accountability

2010

A value-added approach for Local Education Agencies to:

▪ Set individual student growth targets

▪ Incorporate student achievement in teacher evaluations

▪ Document return on investment for programs

▪ Support leadership and board governance

What are Value-Added Growth Models?

Value-added growth models are designed to answer a basic question that has frustrated educators for decades.

How do we know if a student or group of students performed any better than they would have anyway:

- In a different school?

- Under a different curriculum?

- With a different teacher?

- If they were not in a particular program?

Historically, our inability to answer this question has been related to the absence of control groups.

Sorting out the Terms

Growth models transition student achievement from an achievement status model to a model designed to rigorously capture student growth at the individual and aggregate level. Growth models help to address the following questions:

Typical: What is a typical year’s growth?

Actual: How much growth actually occurred?

Value-added models are a broad class of statistical models used to quantify value-added growth.

Aspiration: How much growth would we like to see?

Value-Added Model

How it Works

Class, School, Program, etc.

Projected AchievementWhat a student would have most likely achieved under typical district growth.

Actual Achievement

Math

24

Score

28

Statistical

Comparison

Value-added impact

Students and their historical achievement

The Meaning of Growth

Identify which students are at risk of not making grade-level proficiency

Examine which teachers, programs, and/or interventions are positively affecting student growth

Communicate the comparison of model projections to actual achievement.

ECRA promotes the use of Growth Percentiles. Growth percentiles express the difference between projected and actual achievement as a percentile. This enables schools and districts to:

Document whether each student’s growth was similar to, greater than, or less than typical growth

Set rigorous but attainable individual student growth targets.

Value-Added Growth Models: Steps

Use anchor years to develop a model that quantifies the typical growth for any individual student, given that student’s prior record of achievement.

Use the model to project the most likely future achievement for every student.

Compare model projections to actual achievement.

Below are the steps necessary to develop a value-added growth model.

Identify which summative assessments will be incorporated into your model.

Choose anchor years – the multiple historical years of data used to develop models.

Applications

Program evaluation

Board governance

Below are some applications of value-added growth models:

Individual student growth targeting

Teacher and administrator evaluation

Examples

Growth Model Development

Growth Model Development

Applications: Individual Student Growth Targets

Applications: Individual Student Growth Targets

Applications: Teacher Evaluations

Applications: Teacher Evaluations

Applications: Teacher Evaluations

Applications: Program Evaluation

Achievement growth for students in this program was typical of similar students not in the program.

21st Century Learning Program

Applications: Program Evaluation

Achievement growth for students in this program was greater than typical growth of similar students.

Reading Support Program

Applications: Leadership and Board Governance

The model can be applied to all district schools, programs, courses and interventions to quantify the student achievement return on investment.

Program # Students

Served

Financial Allocatio

n

Achievement Return (value added ACT points)

Reading Support 112 $250,000 0.8

21st Century Learning

248 $780,000 0.1

Summer Academy 58 $112,000 1.5

…

Example