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Growth Modeling

Growth is best understood as a comparison between academic peers. Academic peers are defined as students in the same grade with similar state assessment score histories for a given content area. So, for a student who has had low Hawaii State Assessment scores for the last few years, his or her growth is compared to students who have scored similarly, as measured by the students’ scaled scores.

To use a common metaphor to describe modeling, if your retirement portfolio grew by 10 percent over one year:

• That would be something to be happy about if the market only went up 5 percent in that time, or
• Something to be disappointed with if the rest of the market went up by 20 percent in that time.

Each year, our growth model analyzes all available assessment data to determine how each student’s new test results compare with his/her academic peers. Regardless of school or class size, individual growth can be calculated for all students who have two consecutive assessment scores. The video above and below illustrate simply how the growth model works:

Median Student Growth Percentiles

These percentiles are summary measures that aggregate individual student growth percentiles. Medians are simply the middle student's score or the average of the middle two students' scores when all the scores in a group are sorted from least to greatest.

For example, in a school with a median student growth percentile of 60, half of the students had individual student growth percentiles greater than 60 and half of the students had individual student growth percentiles less than 60.

For an individual student, a student growth percentile of 60 signifies that the student scored higher than 60 percent of other students throughout the state with similar prior state assessment performance.

Growth percentiles are used in the Strive HI System to track school performance relative to peers.