The State Department of Education (GDOE) has released the State Student Growth Model (GSGM), a metric for parents and educators to better understand and analyze the progress students make from year to year.

Today’s data is based on the 2013-2014 school year.

In addition to the Student Growth Model, the GDOE has also released a web tool that will allow parents and the general public to drill down into student-growth data by district, grade level, student group, assessment, and subject areas. Parents will also receive individual student- growth reports for their students. To protect student privacy, they will not, however, have access to individual data of other students—only aggregate data.

The GSGM will not only provide an additional way of analyzing student performance, but also will be utilized in the College and Career Ready Performance Index for the Progress determination and as one of multiple indicators of educator effectiveness in the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System and Leader Keys Effectiveness System.

Today’s data release reflects the Student Growth Percentile (SGP) methodology with the SGP indicating the amount of growth a student has demonstrated relative to academically-similar students from across the state. Growth percentiles range from 1 to 99, with lower percentiles indicating lower academic growth and higher percentiles indicating higher academic growth. With SGPs, all students—regardless of their achievement level—have the opportunity to demonstrate all levels of growth.

When reviewing the data, student growth numbers of 1-34 reflect low student growth; 35-65 represent typical growth; and 66-99 indicate high student growth. The data released today reflect student growth on the Criterion Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT) in elementary and middle schools and the End of Course Tests (EOCT) in high schools.