View Resource: Explaining Student Growth Percentiles
This brief helps explain how Colorado computes a student growth percentile for each student, based on a matched cohort of students with similar test score histories. The target audience is parents who are viewing their student’s individual growth reports, but the document can be used by educators to better understand how growth percentiles are computed. The Colorado Growth Model is an exemplar for how student growth can be measured regardless of proficiency level and without tying growth to movement among performance bands, which can be arbitrary and create perverse incentives to focus on students on the cusp of moving up a performance band. This type of model could easily apply to any large set of standardized assessment data in a nation, state or region.
Outcomes & Lessons Learned: The Colorado Growth Model has been a strong accountability tool in Colorado and has created a more level playing field for all schools. School serving students who are substantially below grade level can still demonstrate the value add of their program by showing how their students are growing in comparison to matched students statewide. The statewide accountability framework relies on the growth analysis as a key feature of determining the lowest performing schools.