Using Growth Models to Measure Child/Student Outcomes for State Systemic Improvement Plans - A Guide for States - Version 1 - December 2016

Oct 15, 2026

Using Growth Models to Measure Child/Student Outcomes for State Systemic Improvement Plans provides an overview of how states can use growth as an accountability and improvement metric. It contrasts growth models with status models, explaining advantages such as sensitivity to meaningful progress, better prediction of future performance, and estimation of teacher or school effects. With a special education focus, it summarizes commonly used model types and outlines their potential application in the SSIP process, including approaches based on cross-cohort, progress monitoring, and value-added methods.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages31

Reading Time1 h 18 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Growth vs. Status Models

Advantages of Growth Models

Interest in Growth Models for Special Education

Overview of Covered Growth Models

Using Growth Models to Measure Child/ Student Outcomes for State Systemic Improvement Plans A Guide for States Jose Blackorby Cornelia Taylor Xin Wei December 2016 Version 1.0 The IDEA Data Center (IDC) developed this document under U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs Grant No. H373Y130002 . Richelle Davis and Meredith Miceli serve as the project officers. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, or enterprise mentioned in this publication is intended or should be inferred. This product is public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. For more information about the IDEA Data Center’s work and its partners, see [www.ideadata.org](www.ideadata.org). Suggested Citation: Blackorby, J., Taylor, C., and Wei, X. (2016, December) . Using Growth Models to Measure Child/Student Outcomes for State Systemic Improvement Plans, (Version 1.0) . IDEA Data Center. Rockville, MD: Westat. Introduction In thinking about student performance for general and special education populations alike, it is popular to consider growth as a metric. After all, children develop as they grow older. They grow in height. They grow in weight. They grow in social and academic skills as well. It is natural for parents and caregivers to think about how their children are growing or progressing and how fast their growth is relative to their own past growth or in comparison to other similar children (Yen 2007) . To look at student growth, states must first identify how they expect students to grow (e.g., 2 inches per year—linear growth, scores double every year—curvilinear growth) . When states identify what they expect of students’ growth, they must define a model to which they can compare student growth. Within educational accountability systems, status (current performance) models and growth models are both used to measure progress and outcomes (Raudenbush 2004) at the classroom, school, district, and state levels. This paper focuses on the use of growth models, broadly defined as the measurement of growth over time, not limited to measurement of growth over time in individual children. Growth models have a number of advantages over status models. Growth models are sensitive to students’meaningful progress when performance remains within the same accountability performance level, predict whether students’ progress is sufficient to meet a higher performance level at some point in the future, describe performance of groups of students in terms of proportions of students with increasing or decreasing rates of growth based on their prior performance, and estimate the effects of teachers or schools on improving student achievement (Castellano and Ho 2013; Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] 2010) . As such, growth models are being used for a variety of different accountability, instructional planning, and evaluation purposes in U.S. schools. These advantages have prompted increased interest in using growth models for special education populations as alternatives to status models (Ahearn 2009; Buzick and Laitusis 2010a; Farley, Saven, Tindal, and Nese 2013; Thurlow, Lazarus, Quenemoen, and Moen 2010) . This paper, with a focus on special education populations, is intended to provide state and local education personnel with an overview of issues to consider with growth models, models currently in use, and a description of common models and a scenario of their potential use within the State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP) process. This paper will describe the range of models and the advantages and disadvantages associated with their use. We do not expect to establish one recommended model but rather a range of options that may align with SSIPs. This paper provides a series of growth models that states and scho

FAQs

What is the main purpose of using growth models in SSIP accountability systems?

The document explains growth models as measurements of growth over time to assess progress and outcomes across classroom, school, district, and state levels, and to support SSIP instructional and evaluation decisions.

How do growth models differ from status (current performance) models?

Growth models capture progress over time, are sensitive to meaningful improvements within the same performance level, and can help predict whether students will reach higher levels, unlike status models that rely primarily on current performance.

Which growth model approaches are covered for measuring student outcomes?

The document lists cross-cohort models, progress monitoring systems, simple gain and trajectory models, residual gain models, projection models, value tables, conditional growth percentile models, and value-added models (VAM).

Oct 15, 2026

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