Growth-to-Proficiency and Student Poverty: A National Landscape Analysis

Missouri schools will soon receive state ratings on an A–F scale. For K–8 schools, those grades will be based entirely on test score performance: two existing measures—proficiency and value-added growth—plus a new measure called “growth-to-proficiency” will be combined to create the A–F grades.

Several states already use growth-to-proficiency measures, although each applies a different formula. Missouri is still developing the methodology it will use.

This brief examines data from 8 states that use growth-to-proficiency models and an additional 5 states that use related value-table approaches. We explore a pivotal question: How are schools’growth-to-proficiency scores related to student poverty?