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Understanding Assessment Results
Achievement and Growth
There are two primary ways of understanding how your child is performing on state assessments; they are Achievement/Proficiency and Growth. As parents and teachers, we have a number of measures we rely on across the year to understand your children’s academic progress. Score reports and Student Growth Plot reports should be viewed in conjunction with other information about how your child is progressing in school, such as their grades, completion of class assignments, and their collaborative and social skills. All these indicators of student performance together form a more complete picture of a student’s success in school.
OSPI provides Student Score Reports and Student Growth Plot Reports to graphically display academic growth that includes predictive growth data for next year.
View sample Score Reports in English and Spanish.
View a sample Student Growth Plot Report that includes a helpful tutorial, Understanding Student Growth Plot Reports in English and Spanish.
Additional information and resources are available on OSPI's webpages for Scores and Reports and Student Growth Percentile.
OSPI annually measures student achievement with the state assessments. The assessments measure students' understanding of the Washington state learning standards. The Washington State Report Card is OSPI's report of assessment proficiency scores and other strands of data. The Report Card is updated each November. Viewers may track school or district performance across multiple student measures, such as attendance, assessment proficiency, student growth, graduation rates among other measures.
Do state and federal laws required districts to administer state assessments each year?Yes, state testing is required by Washington state law (RCW 28A. 230.095) and federal law (Elementary and Secondary Education Act). Statewide testing is important because it helps ensure all public-school students receive a quality education, no matter where they go to school, because they are measured by the same standards.
What is the calculation behind the published Proficiency Met rate as seen on the OSPI Report Card?It is the number of students achieving proficiency (Achievement Level 3 or 4) divided by the number of all the students expected to test, not of the students who tested.
Are all students expected to test?Yes, in grades 3-8, and 10 for ELA and math. Grades 5, 8, 11 for science.
What happens when a student does not test, how does that influence the Met rate on the OSPI Report Card?Students who do not test receive a zero and the Met rate goes down for that school, grade level, and the district. Parents who wish to refuse state testing may contact their child's principal for further information and support.
To look at how a student is growing in assessment subjects, we look at their Student Growth Percentile (SGP). SGPs are meaningful because they tell a deeper story of a student’s progress over time – not simply where they are now.
A SGP describes a student's growth compared to other students with similar prior test scores (their academic peers). Although the calculations for SGPs are complex, percentiles are a familiar method of measuring students in comparison to their peers.
SGP is a method of determining educational status based upon relative improvement. This data encourages students when a student had not met OSPI proficiency standards but were making progress in doing so. In essence this is an evaluation of relative “effort” rather than actual objective academic achievement. For instance, this means that despite scoring below grade level standard, a student's SGP can show tremendous progress and their achievement can be recognized.
SGPs can provide valuable evidence to help understand if students are making an adequate amount of academic growth from one year to the next. They are an additional tool that can help parents engage with teachers and administrators in constructive conversations about their child’s learning. Questions that a parent might want to ask are:
- What steps can we take since my child’s growth in reading was low and they need to catch up?
- Is my child on track to reach proficiency in math?
- Did my child make good progress last year, or are they losing ground?
Learn about OSPI business rules for calculating SGPs here.
This page was reviewed on October 30, 2023. Please contact Karen Allen with comments.
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