The MAP® Growth™ theory of action describes key features of MAP Growth and its position in a comprehensive assessment system. The basic premise of the theory of action is that all students learn when MAP Growth is situated in a comprehensive assessment system and used for its intended purposes to yield information about student learning and enable…

Studying development processes, as they unfold over time, involves collecting repeated measures from individuals and modeling the changes over time. One methodological challenge in this type of longitudinal data is separating retest effects, due to the repeated assessments, from developmental processes such as maturation or age. In this article,…

In educational contexts where many domains subject to improvement are interdependent and causal evidence is frequently lacking it is difficult, if not impossible, for policymakers and educational practitioners to decide which domain should be invested in. This paper proposes a new method that uses Conditional Mean Independent Correlations (CMIC)…

As part of "The Wallace Foundation's Principal Pipeline" initiative, six districts have been working to reshape their school leadership evaluation systems to provide better and more consistent feedback to principals--and ultimately to help them grow in their jobs. In this article, Pamela Mendels, a senior editor at Wallace, describes the…

In 2016, the federal government proposed and adopted the Every Student Succeeds Act, which retracted the federal government's prior control over states' teacher evaluation systems, permitting more local control. Kevin Close, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, and Clarin Collins collected information from states to determine the degree to which states were…

A huge portion of what we know about how humans develop, learn, behave, and interact is based on survey data. Researchers use longitudinal growth modeling to understand the development of students on psychological and social-emotional learning constructs across elementary and middle school. In these designs, students are typically administered a…

In 2010, the Massachusetts Legislature lifted the cap on the number of charter schools that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) can authorize in low-performing school districts. The "smart cap" requires the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to rank district performance (based on student outcomes)…

To date, small sample problems with latent growth models (LGMs) have not received the amount of attention in the literature as related mixed-effect models (MEMs). Although many models can be interchangeably framed as a LGM or a MEM, LGMs uniquely provide criteria to assess global data-model fit. However, previous studies have demonstrated poor…

Results from a sample of 1,013 Georgia principals who rated 12,617 teachers are used to compare holistic and analytic principal judgments with indicators of student growth central to the state's teacher evaluation system. Holistic principal judgments were compared to mean student growth percentiles (MGPs) and analytic judgments from a formal…

This publication summarizes the key discussion from experts in the field of measuring student growth during a convening held February 2015. Experts heard about two emerging approaches to measuring growth: Portfolios of student work samples and unit value-added models that provide teachers with timely and actionable feedback that they can use to…

Single-timepoint educational measurement practices are capable of assessing student ability at the time of testing but are not designed to be informative of student capacity for developing in any particular academic domain, despite commonly being used in such a manner. For this reason, such measurement practice systematically underestimates the…

Higher education monitoring evaluation is a process that uses modern information technology to continually collect and deeply analyze relevant data, visually present the state of higher education, and provide an objective basis for value judgments and scientific decision making by diverse bodies Higher education monitoring evaluation is…

Assessment is a crucial component of gifted education. Not only does it facilitate the recognition of the potential and specific needs of gifted students, it also monitors the progress and growth of gifted students, and allows for the evaluation of gifted education programs. In the present review, we synthesize the literature on assessment in…

This discussion guide is part of a larger practice guide designed to help state education agencies (SEAs) define measurement goals, select college and career readiness measures and indicators designed to support those goals, and use the data gathered with those measures and indicators to make informed decisions about college and career readiness…

There are ongoing debates as to the merits of mastery and performance (or competitive) approaches to school and student learning. Mastery approaches are focused on factors and processes such as effort, skill development, learning, and understanding. Performance approaches are focused more on competition, demonstrating relative ability, social…