Growth Model Vs. Status Model

Growth models have been touted by many experts as a viable alternative or complement to the status model of measuring student achievement. In contrast to status models, growth models measure school performance by “how much students have gained from one year to the next using longitudinal records of individual student achievement in reading and mathematics.” Unlike a the status model which measures students’ performance at one point in time, the growth model “is a collection of definitions, calculations, or rules that summarizes student performance over two or more time points and supports interpretations about students, their classrooms, their educators, or their schools.” This is a broad definition because the purpose and scope of growth …show more content…
As of the writing of this paper, fifteen states total have been approved to use growth models. In order to meet NCLB standards, these growth models have to be combined with status models; thus, the types of models in use today are best termed “status plus growth” models. This is one of the main reasons that the policy criteria for making AYP needs to be changed; status models are an outdated mode of determining proficiency and should be done away with in favor of growth models. While there is some evidence that most schools that make AYP under the status model also make AYP under a growth-only model, it is clear that this is not true of all schools. No school should be considered “proficient” if its students are not showing growth over time. Growth is part of the education process and it is far more important to measure a student 's growth than to measure his status according to an arbitrary …show more content…
Most growth models use “a standard setting committee composed of qualified, informed, and invested stakeholders [who] can be charged with defining adequate growth.” This group of stakeholders needs to be tasked with determining what constitutes adequate growth given the model used and what the baseline standards of achievement are. Thus, developing robust standards is crucial to the success of growth models. However, before delving into the importance of both quantitative and qualitative standards as measures of student growth, it is first important to discuss the downside of growth