After a previous post about VAMs v. Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) (see also VAMs v. SGPs Part II) a reader posted a comment asking for more information about the utility of SGPs, but also about the difference between SGPs and Student Growth Objectives.
“Student Growth Objectives” is a new term for an older concept that is being increasingly integrated into educational accountability systems nationwide, and also under scrutiny (see one of Diane Ravitch’s recent posts about this here). But the concept underlying Student Growth Objectives (SGOs) is essentially just Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). Why they insist on using the term “growth” in place of the term “learning” is perhaps yet another fad. Related, it also likely has something to do with various legislative requirements (e.g., Race to the Top terminologies), although evidence in support of this transition is also void.
Regardless, and put simply, an SGO/SLO is an annual goal for measuring student growth/learning of the students instructed by teachers (or principals, for school-level evaluations) who are not eligible to participate in a school’s or district’s value-added or student growth model. This includes the vast majority of teachers in most schools or districts (e.g., 70+%), because only those teachers who instruct reading/language arts or mathematics in state achievement tested grade levels, typically grades 3-8, are eligible to participate in the VAM or SGP evaluation system. Hence via the development of SGOs/SLOs, administrators and others were either unwilling to allow these exclusions to continue or forced to establish a mechanism to include the other teachers to meet some legislative mandate.
New Jersey, for example, defines an SGO as “a long-term academic goal that teachers set for groups of students and must be: Specific and measureable; Aligned to New Jersey’s curriculum standards; Based on available prior student learning data; A measure of what a student has learned between two points in time; Ambitious and achievable” (for more information click here).
Denver Public Schools has been using SGOs for many years; their 2008-2009 Teacher Handbook states that an SGO must be “focused on the expected growth of [a teacher’s] students in areas identified in collaboration with their principal,” as well as that the objectives must be “Job-based; Measurable; Focused on student growth in learning; Based on learning content and teaching strategies; Discussed collaboratively at least three times during the school year; May be adjusted during the school year; Are not directly related to the teacher evaluation process; [and] Recorded online” (for more information click here).
That being said, and in sum, SGOs/SLOs, like VAMs, are not supported with empirical work. As Jersey Jazzman summarized very well in his post about this, the correlational evidence is very weak, the conclusions drawn by outside researchers are a stretch, and the rush to implement these measures is just as unfounded as the rush to implement VAMs for educator evaluation. We don’t know that SGOs/SLOs make a difference in distinguishing “good” from “poor” teachers; and in fact, some could argue (like Jersey Jazzman does) that they don’t actually do so much of anything at all. They’re just another metric being used in the attempt to quantify “high quality” teaching.
Thanks to Dr. Sarah Polasky for this post.