Student Growth Inferences

Making Inferences
About Impact on
Student Growth
Dr. Patricia Reeves, Associate Professor Educational Leadership & Research
Western Michigan University – February 2014
Achievement Centered Leadership (ACL) Grant Project: Cohort 1 – Session 1
ACL:Session1:DDIM.Reeves2.27.14
1

The Pending Legislation on
Growth
• There will be a State Growth and/or Value Added Model
• There will be criteria for mandatory State assessments
used for teacher, school, and district effectiveness
ratings
• Districts will need to augment the State Growth and
Value-Added rating system with a Local Growth Model
• The point of growth models is to make inferences about
how educators, schools, and districts are influencing
learning and learning rates
2

Growth Rating Recap:
State Growth Rating + Local Growth
Rating
Under the proposed legislation:
•25% of evaluation based on growth starting 2014-15
•In 2017-18 growth becomes 50%
•State will provide growth ratings on State assessments
•Districts can develop growth ratings based on a local growth
model
3

Building upon your District implementation
plan for School ADvance: Growth Ratings
4

5

6

How do you know students
are successful in your
schools? 1. How do you define success?
a. What is the district definition?
b. What is the school level definition?
2. What measures help you track how well
students are doing?
3. How do those measures align with your
definitions of success? 7

Three Decision Points for a Value
Added or Growth Model
8

Influences on Student
Learning
9

Assessing School, Teacher, and
Administrator Influence on
Growth
10

Developing a Local Growth
Model
1.What indicators and measures have you been using to
evaluate teachers’ and administrators’ performance?
2.How well aligned are those indicators with your school
improvement plan and the district improvement plan?
3.How well aligned are they with your definition of student
success?
11

Regardless of students’ entering
achievement levels, growth is:
KEEPING THEM MOVING UP AND EXPANDING:
Goal is to either maintain or accelerate growth
rates if at, or above, target achievement levels to
stay ahead of a success track (e.g. hitting 3rd, 7th/8th,
and 11th Grade targets) and to branch out.
12
MAKING SURE THEY KEEP UP: Goal is to maintain
or accelerate the growth rates if at, or above,
target achievement levels to stay on a success
track (e.g. hitting 3rd, 7th/8th, and 11th Grade
targets).
MOVING THEM UP: Goal is to accelerate growth rates
until these students are also on target to reach
achievement targets by certain grades in order to get
on a success track (e.g. hitting 3rd, 7th/8th, and 11th Grade
targets).
Higher
Middle
Lower

The Point of Growth Models
• How are we doing at ensuring that our higher academic
performers are continuing to MOVE UP and branch out*?
• How are we doing at ensuring that our middle academic
performers (the majority of our students) are continuing to
either KEEP UP or MOVE UP and branch out*?
• How are we doing at ensuring that our lowest performers are
on track to CATCH UP?
*Branch out means to expand development in other academic
and/or non-academic indicators of student success, e.g. the arts,
community service, athletics, and non-core curricular subjects
(languages, logic, philosophy, social sciences, etc.)
13

3 Common approaches for creating growth ratings
Performance Status
(descriptive stat models)
Value-Added Models or VAM
(linear stat models)
Growth to Proficiency Models
(curvi-linear stat models)
Compares performance status of
each student to fixed performance
targets (e.g. proficiency level or X
amount of pre-post growth).
Ignores differences in student
growth rates and differences in
student background.
Teachers rated on # or % of
students achieving targets – based
on either proficiency levels or
growth levels.
Teacher information shows where
each student performed in
relation to performance targets
for that year.
Compares growth of students to
their academic peers and then
compares groups of students to
other groups of students by
teacher.
Often controls for differences in
student background.
Teachers rated on teacher to
teacher comparisons of
student growth by academic peer
group or aggregate groups.
Teacher information shows how
each teacher’s class grew
compared to other teachers’
classes for that year, either by
whole comparison group or sub-groups
(e.g. low SES, ESL, etc.)
Compares growth of each student
to growth of that student’s
academic history and academic
peers (i.e. students with the same
performance history).
ACL:Session1:DDIM.Reeves2.27.14 14
Does not need to control for
differences in student background
because teachers not compared to
one another.
Teachers rated on how they are
moving students toward growth
targets; i.e. catching up, keeping
up, moving up.
Teacher information shows how
each student is growing compared
to growth targets for their
academic peer group based on
rate of growth needed to reach
performance targets over several
grades.

The Logic of a
Local Growth Model
Actual
Achievement
Projected
Achievement
Value-added
Growth
Instruction
Individual Student Past Performance
15

Growth & Value Added
Value-Added
Ratings
Changes in student
achievement and other success
indicators across time
Estimations of
Teacher and
school influence

Value-Added Models:
How they work
Pre-Test
YEAR 1
Post-Test
YEAR 2
Actual student
scale score
VALUE ADDED
Predicted student
scale score
Student scale
score
Based on
observationally
similar students

Visualization with a SGP Model
Each student
plotted against a
backdrop of
typical growth
and status

Individual Student Monitoring and
RTI with a SGP Model

Setting Growth Standards
Higher Than Expected
Value-added
Growth
Growth
Thresholds
Expected Growth
Lower Than Expected
Unsatisfactory Growth
Evaluation
Categories
Highly Effective
Effective
Needs Improvement
Unsatisfactory

Teacher Evaluation Example with a
SGP Model
LGMs can
create a single
comparable
growth metric
across all tests.

Growth to proficiency SGM
Sets yearly targets that will put low-achievers on pace
to meet proficient and narrow achievement gaps
Growth targets
(based on proficient by grade 7)

Processing the Challenge of Rating
Individual Teachers and Administrators
on Student Growth
1. With your district team, discuss what measures you are
using now to determine how teachers are influencing
student growth
2. How are you analyzing the data to determine a value-added
rating?
3. Where do you think you need to go from here?
4. What conversations will you have back in your district?

A tale of 2 teachers
One has an Effective Rating
The other,
a Highly Effective Rating
24

Reminder: Three Purposes for
Performance Evaluation
1. Achieve Organizational Goals, i.e. Student
Outcomes
2. Guide the learning, growth, and development of
personnel, e.g. teachers and leaders
3. Make decisions about hiring, placement,
retention, promotion, and compensation
25

Three Purposes for
Performance Evaluation
1. Achieve Organizational Goals, i.e. Student
Outcomes
2. Guide the learning, growth, and development
of personnel, e.g. teachers and leaders
3. Make decisions about hiring, placement,
retention, promotion, and compensation
26

Reminders:
1. We can follow student success by identifying
success indicators and measuring growth toward
established performance standards and beyond
2. We can grow student success by analyzing growth
rates and intervening where/how needed with
evidence based practices (strategies)
3. We can grow teacher, administrator, school and
district performance by assessing both practice
and results (i.e. student growth) and setting
improvement goals accordingly
27

Final Reminder: Growth Models work best
when all growth goals are aligned across
the school and district and based on
definitions (indicators) of student success
28
Teachers Administrators
Superintendent Board

Student Growth Inferences

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