Assessment/Accountability Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System
Growth Model

Growth Model Release

I am pleased to announce that this fall, we will report both aggregate and individual growth data statewide for the first time. These data will help answer questions such as:

• How much academic growth did each student demonstrate from year to year, relative to his or her academic peers (others with a similar test score history)?
• Is each student's growth similar to, greater than, or less than typical growth for his or her academic peers?
• How much growth do districts, schools, grades, or subgroups show?

Educators naturally want to measure their students' changes in performance over time. But the MCAS system was not designed to measure these changes, only to measure each student's performance level each year. The growth measure we have developed, known as a student growth percentile, solves this problem by comparing each student's change in performance from one year to the next to other students with a similar test score history ("academic peers"). The change is expressed as a percentile; for instance, if a student grows more than 65 percent of his academic peers, then his student growth percentile is 65. These percentiles can be aggregated to report median growth for districts, schools, grades, and subgroups. This allows us to move beyond comparing this year's students to last year's students, instead comparing individual students' change over time relative to their academic peers.

Since this measure is new to all of us, we would like to use this first year as a chance for everyone to learn more about how to interpret the student growth percentiles and how to use them as a new dimension for understanding student performance. As our understanding of the model grows, our use of these data will evolve. Ultimately we expect that these data may be useful for districts and the state in identifying best practices, evaluating programs, supplementing our existing accountability measures, and targeting assistance.

Student growth percentiles will be made available to districts this fall through the Education Data Warehouse. You will receive individual English language arts and mathematics growth results for all students in grades 4 through 8 with test score data from the prior and current years. We will also report aggregate data for schools, districts, and subgroups on the state's Profiles website, as we do for standard MCAS results. We will be piloting a growth measure for high school students this year and hope to make that available in 2010. The student growth percentiles are calculated directly from MCAS data and require no additional data submissions from districts.

We have been working with several districts to pilot the new data and the accompanying reports and written materials, and we appreciate their important contributions to making sure that the data are informative and actionable. The pilot districts are: Community Day Charter Public School, Franklin, Lowell, Malden, Newton, Northampton, Sharon, Springfield, and Winchendon. We also appreciate the valuable comments we have received from stakeholder groups as we have presented the concept and preliminary results during the development phase.

Throughout the summer and fall we will offer presentations at summer institutes, regional training sessions, and other opportunities for the field to become familiar with the new measure and its applications. Information about these opportunities will be posted at http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/growth/ and will also be distributed through the superintendent's update and other communication vehicles.

Measuring individual student progress over time has been an important need for many of you that, until now, has gone unmet. I am glad we will soon be able to fill that gap, and I look forward to working with all of you this year on incorporating growth information into our efforts to improve student performance statewide.