The map below shows the percentage of students who had typical or high growth in English Language Arts (ELA) over the past three years. Mouse-over or tap the map to view school names and percentages, or use the filters to change to math, grade levels, or to a specific year.

Student growth percentiles are calculated by the Georgia Department of Education by comparing a student’s current year test score to those of other students across the state who had similar test scores in previous years. Typical or high growth is defined as growth in the 35th percentile or higher.

The visual above defaults to a three year average because student growth results often fluctuate from year to year. However, this can hide important variation over time and by grade and subject. Use the next visual to learn about SGP results for a specific school in more detail.

The default view shows student growth at Burgess Peterson Elementary over the past four years. In 4th grade ELA, 84% of Burgess’ students had typical or high growth, well above the state average of 65%. In 5th grade ELA, 70% of students had typical or high growth. The blue bands in each pane represent 95% confidence intervals and allow us to see whether the percent of students achieving typical or high growth is statistically significantly different from the state average. For example, since the confidence interval for 5th grade ELA at Burgess includes the state average of 65%, the difference from the state is not statistically significant. In contrast, the ELA and Math percentages for Burgess’ 4th graders are significantly higher than the state average. Burgess is a relatively small school, so the confidence intervals are larger due to the small sample size¹.

Elementary schools only receive student growth scores in grades 4 and 5. Our school performance vs. poverty graphs are a helpful complement because they better represent accumulated achievement from earlier grades.

The last visual shows student growth at North Atlanta for end of course exams. Students at North Atlanta grew well above the state average in Ninth Grade Literature and Algebra. Use the school filter to view other schools administering end of course exams. Note that the school filter also includes schools that administer Algebra I exams to advanced eighth grade students.

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1. Confidence intervals are calculated at the 95% level using the standard error of the sample mean. This is only one of two sources of uncertainty. Each student SGP score is also an estimate from a statistical model run by GADOE and has associated uncertainty, but is not available to us. Given the large sample size for the GADOE model, this second source of error is likely smaller. But regardless, the confidence intervals are an underestimate of the total uncertainty. We compensate for this by using a relatively large confidence interval- 95%.