It is important to have a complete picture of student performance to help determine next best steps to help all students achieve and grow. That’s why we’ve updated the Star Growth Report for Star Early Literacy, Star Reading, and Star Math for assessments administered in English and in Spanish to include a student’s Growth Proficiency Category.
The Star Growth Report summarizes growth between two testing periods in the same school year as soon as a student has both a pretest and posttest score. Teachers can run the report for a class or specific groups of students by SGP window, and administrators can see growth for each class or grade in their schools.
The new Growth Proficiency Category column, added to the Star Growth Report, provides educators with a quick indicator of a student’s level of growth, based on their Student Growth Percentile (SGP) score, and the student’s proficiency, based on their Percentile Rank (PR) score related to a particular benchmark. While achievement indicates whether performance is below, above, or on par with grade-level expectations, growth explains the type of progress the student is making over time. This provides a more well-rounded picture of student performance.
Student achievement typically is gleaned from one score at a single point in time. When you consider growth in addition to achievement, it can greatly enrich your understanding of how well a student is performing (Betebenner, 2009; Thurlow et al., 2010). While achievement indicates whether performance is below, above, or on par with grade-level expectations, growth explains the type of progress the student is making over time. For example, one of your students may be performing at a low proficiency level, yet experiencing high rates of growth. Conversely, a high performing student’s growth could be stagnating.
SGP is a proven growth measure and when combined with reliable achievement data, teachers are better able to plan the best instructional pathway for their students. This additional insight gives educators one more way to better understand how their students are developing.