How does Massachusetts measure student growth?
Massachusetts measures growth for an individual student by comparing the change in his or her MCAS performance from one year to a subsequent year to that of all other students in the state who had similar historical MCAS results (the student’s “academic peers”). This change in performance is reported as a student growth percentile (abbreviated SGP) and indicates how high or low that student’s growth was as compared to that of his/her academic peers (See Questions 15 and 16 for technical details). For a school or district, the growth percentiles for all students are aggregated to create a median student growth percentile for the school or district. The median student growth percentile is a representation of “typical” growth for students in the school or district. The 2008 growth percentiles, which will be reported along with the 2009 growth percentiles, were calculated for students in grades 4-8 who took MCAS tests in the same subject in 2007. The 2006 test results were used when availa
