The core value driving academic improvement is the students’ ability to demonstrate sufficient academic growth or improvement to achieve or maintain proficiency. The expected outcomes for improvement are increased student academic growth in math and ELA and improved academic performance among the lowest-performing students.
The measures incorporated into the WVAS for Improvement include:
- Observed growth rates that measure how much academic growth occurred in math and ELA for each student compared to other students having similar academic histories (i.e., their academic peers)
- Adequate growth rates that measure student academic growth in math and ELA relative to achievement standards. Adequate growth rates provide an estimate of how much growth needs to occur for students to meet or maintain proficiency in math and ELA
- Improvement of low-performing student rates that measure the academic growth of students in need of substantial improvement in math or ELA