Once in school, children’s cognitive and social development are supported by effective public education and quality schools. Attending lower-quality schools reduces a child’s chances of attending and succeeding at postsecondary institutions.
Metric: Average per grade change in English Language Arts achievement between third and eighth grades
This metric reports the average per year improvement in English Language Arts (reading comprehension and written expression) among public school students between the third and eighth grades. Assessments are normalized such that a typical learning growth is roughly 1 grade level a year. A value of 1 indicates a jurisdiction is learning at an average rate, below 1 is slower than average, and above 1 is faster than average.
Validity: State assessments are well defined and validated but vary by state. The Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) standardized these to be nationally comparable and comparable over time.
Availability: State assessment data are available from the SEDA.
Frequency: New data for the metric are available annually.
Geography: Data are available at the school district and county levels.
Consistency: Tests of student progress vary by state and can change over time if states modify their tests. SEDA has standardized these to be comparable over time and space.
Subgroups: SEDA has adjusted scores by race or ethnicity, income, and gender.
Limitations: Not all counties report assessments for all grades, so some estimates may be based on fewer data points. SEDA manipulated the underlying data to introduce noise to ensure confidentiality, which compromises data quality. Residential mobility into or out of a county may result in the “cohort” not being the same between third and eighth grades. The interpretation can be complicated when comparing across subgroups. For example, research suggests that annual improvement in English for Hispanic children will exceed those of non-Hispanic white children because Hispanic children, on average, start with lower levels of English language skills and can improve more quickly than children with higher baseline skills. It is important to keep these concepts in mind when interpreting results.
