1. Local Growth Models for Accountability
A value-added approach for Local Education Agencies to:
Set individual student growth targets
Incorporate student achievement in teacher evaluations
Document return on investment for programs
Support leadership and board governance
2010

2. What are Value-Added Growth Models?
Value-added growth models are designed to answer a basic question that has frustrated educators for decades.
How do we know if a student or group of students performed any better than they would have anyway:
- In a different school?
- Under a different curriculum?
- With a different teacher?
- If they were not in a particular program?
Historically, our inability to answer this question has been related to the absence of control groups.

3. Sorting out the Terms Typical: What is a typical year’s growth?
Growth models transition student achievement from an achievement status model to a model designed to rigorously capture student growth at the individual and aggregate level. Growth models help to address the following questions:
Typical: What is a typical year’s growth?
Actual: How much growth actually occurred?
Aspiration: How much growth would we like to see?
Value-added models are a broad class of statistical models used to quantify value-added growth.

4. How it Works 24 28 Projected Achievement Value-Added Model
What a student would have most likely achieved under typical district growth.
Students and their historical achievement
Math 24
Value-added impact
Statistical
Comparison
Score 28
Class, School, Program, etc.
Actual Achievement

5. The Meaning of Growth
ECRA promotes the use of Growth Percentiles. Growth percentiles express the difference between projected and actual achievement as a percentile. This enables schools and districts to:
Document whether each student’s growth was similar to, greater than, or less than typical growth
Identify which students are at risk of not making grade-level proficiency
Examine which teachers, programs, and/or interventions are positively affecting student growth
Communicate the comparison of model projections to actual achievement.
Set rigorous but attainable individual student growth targets.

6. Value-Added Growth Models: Steps
Below are the steps necessary to develop a value-added growth model.
Identify which summative assessments will be incorporated into your model.
Choose anchor years – the multiple historical years of data used to develop models.
Use anchor years to develop a model that quantifies the typical growth for any individual student, given that student’s prior record of achievement.
Use the model to project the most likely future achievement for every student.
Compare model projections to actual achievement.

7. Applications Below are some applications of value-added growth models:
Individual student growth targeting
Teacher and administrator evaluation
Program evaluation
Board governance

8. Examples

9. Growth Model Development

10. Growth Model Development

11. Applications: Individual Student Growth Targets

12. Applications: Individual Student Growth Targets

13. Applications: Teacher Evaluations

14. Applications: Teacher Evaluations

15. Applications: Teacher Evaluations

16. Applications: Program Evaluation
21st Century Learning Program
Achievement growth for students in this program was typical of similar students not in the program.

17. Applications: Program Evaluation
Reading Support Program
Achievement growth for students in this program was greater than typical growth of similar students.

18. Applications: Leadership and Board Governance
The model can be applied to all district schools, programs, courses and interventions to quantify the student achievement return on investment.
Example
Program
# Students Served
Financial Allocation
Achievement Return
(value added ACT points)
Reading Support
112
$250,000
0.8
21st Century Learning
248
$780,000
0.1
Summer Academy 58
$112,000
1.5 …