What does this chart mean?

 

Imagine Marietta took the scores from all the students that took the Fall and Spring

 Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10) this year. Students who took only the Fall or only the Spring were not included in this data.

 

A gain score is defined as the difference between the Fall and Spring test NCE score. That is, gain = Spring NCE- Fall NCE. This results in a gain score that has an expected value of 1.0, therefore, represents a student that has participated in one year of education and stayed in the same relative position as students in the national norming sample. Our school average for Reading is 1.06 and Math is 1.14. This means that our students had learning gains greater than 1.0 year and made more progress than normal.

 

Please note, a specific test score (or learning gain) is a snapshot for any particular student. The discrepancies can be accounted for by a combination of random measurement errors and factors such as student health, mood, testing conditions, etc.

The best indicator of student achievement is to use all testing and authentic assessments from the school year and understand a child’s strengths and challenges.