Student Growth Percentiles released by GaDOE

Having worked in different states, I have learned that no two are alike when it comes to their approaches in accountability. There are always nuances. For example, in Georgia, there has been extensive work on measuring student growth.  The general idea is that it not enough to know how well a student scored on a test or assessment…part of the assessment of whether a student is reaching their full learning potential and growing academically from year to year is about tracking their growth.  So, here, growth matters.  The expectation is that teachers use the data to see if they are being effective with students in their classrooms from year to year, principals use the data to determine if their students are growing in similar fashion to other students in the school, and the district uses the data to measure whether academically similar students are growing at the same rate throughout the city.

The 2014 Student Growth Percentiles (SGP) were released earlier today to the public by the GA Department of Education.  Parents may remember that Georgia was one of 10 states granted a waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind Act in February 2012. The state created a new accountability system called the College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI), which was released May 2013. The Index shows how schools are performing in a more comprehensive manner than the pass/fail system previously in place under Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The SGP results are components of both the teacher and leader evaluations and the CCRPI, representing 25 of the 100 points on the CCRPI, and they are designed to measure student growth during the academic year.

SGPs are great because they can measure growth in students, groups, schools and entire districts. The SGPs we received today are calculated based on the performance of students on the CRCT in grades 4 – 8 and the EOCT in grades 9 – 12 compared to the performance of academically similar students across the state.  A student’s growth percentile can range from 1 to 99.

Soon, APS parents will receive individualized student growth reports for students who were enrolled in courses with SGP results in the 2013-14 school year.  If you have questions about your child’s report, please take a moment to sit with your school’s principal or counselor and they will help you interpret the data.  You can also learn more about growth and how to interpret scores by visiting the APS website What is Growth and SGP or view the video at the end of this blog.

Now for today’s results:

Tables 1 and 2 below detail the results of our entire district by content area, grade level, and high school course. Please note that the results should be interpreted as follows: “Our students in grade 5 mathematics grew more than 40% of their academically similar peers across the state.”

Table 1. 2014 student growth percentiles for Atlanta Public Schools, grades 4 – 8

Table 2. 2014 student growth percentiles for Atlanta Public Schools, high schools

We expect the state to publicly release the CCRPI next week. Stay tuned for more information.