The Group Growth Report offers a few different option for setting the End of Year Goal number in the report. The filter to change the settings is located at the top right of the report. Clicking on the field will open the open list.
The report will default to use the Next Highest benchmark setting as the End of Year Goal. This means that a student with a score that is in the High Risk category will show an End of Year Goal score that is the Some Risk benchmark cut point. A student in the Some Risk category will show and End of Year Goal that is the Low Risk cut point.
In addition to the Next Highest benchmark setting, there is also an option for Low Risk and College Pathways. Selecting the Low Risk option will change the End of Year Goal for all students to the Low Risk cut point for the spring period for the grade of the students in the report. Selecting College Pathways will set the End of Year Goal score to the College Pathways cut point for the spring period for the grade of the students. Please note that only aReading, aMath, and CBMReading have a College Pathways benchmark.
The By Goal Score option allows for a specific score to be entered. The score that is entered will be used as the End of Year Goal for all students.
The By Growth %ile option allows for a specific growth percentile to be entered. Doing this will calculate an end of year score for each student based on the student's ending period score and the growth rate of the selected percentile. The growth rate of the selected percentile would be applied from the date the end interval assessment was taken to the the midpoint of the spring screening period.
Changes to the End of Year Goal setting are reflected in the End of Year Goal Score column in the report. Please note that you will have to click the + at the far right side of the report in order to see this column. Placement of this icon can be seen in the screen shot below.
In the screen shot below, we are looking at a CBMReading report for a 3rd grade class. You can see that Next Highest has been selected/defaulted as the End of Year Goal option. This will place the EOY Goal at the next highest benchmark cut point. The Benchmark score listed is 131. This is the spring Low Risk cut point for students in 3rd grade. Because these students have an ending score in this report that is higher than the spring benchmark score, the EOY Goal score is displaying the next highest benchmark, College Pathways, for these students. Please note that the College Pathways benchmark is only available for aReading, aMath, and CBMReading.
In the example below, Low Risk has been selected as the EOY Goal. This will change the EOY Goal to match the Benchmark Score, as we use the spring Low Risk cut point as the benchmark.
In the example below, we have selected an EOY Goal of the 50th percentile. This calculates a specific score for each student based on the growth rate at the 50th percentile. The Weekly Goal Growth Score is the same for every student, as the growth rate at the 50th percentile in this example is 1.28 words per week. The EOY Goal Score will potentially be different for each student as it is using the end interval score and test date for each student to calculate the EOY Goal score.
Next Steps
To learn more about the Group Growth Report, take a look at the other articles that explore the Group Growth Report by Class or for District Managers, or the articles that explore Cached Data and Growth Columns.