ABSTRACT
In recent years, state educational accountability systems in the United States have shifted from models that focus on student performance at a single point in time to those that evaluate progress or the pace of change over time. Student test results that depict such score changes are referred to as indicators of student growth. These results are typically computed using advanced mathematical models that aim to quantify score changes across time points and/or project patterns of student performance in the future. This orientation toward the measurement and evaluation of growth has impacted what educational test results mean and how such results should be understood and used, in the context of communicating test results to interested stakeholders. Many high-stakes educational decisions rest on student growth results, and increasingly displays of growth are being included on individual student score reports disseminated to students annually. While the practice of score reporting in education has advanced considerably in recent years with renewed attention being paid to report contents as well as the processes by which such reports are developed and evaluated, there are many ways that individual elements of reports such as student growth results are presented, and little is known about how report recipients understand and/or use such data. This chapter includes a review of student growth reporting approaches and presents results from a small-scale study to evaluate understanding of several common growth reporting display strategies. Implications for reporting student growth and research needs are discussed.
