Student Growth

The Student Growth report shows changes in student scores over time for students who have taken two or more consecutive state assessment tests in Michigan.

Student Growth helps students, parents and educators determine if a student’s learning is above, near or below the average of their comparison group. It is not about how high or low a student’s score is, but rather how much the student has learned since the prior test.

The Michigan Department of Education calculates student growth using the Student Growth Percentile: the degree to which a student has learned compared to a group of academic peers who had a comparable score on the previous test (or multiple previous tests) in a subject. Each student receives a percentile rank ranging from 1 to 99, where a SGP of 50 indicates that a student demonstrated growth in the content area equal or greater than half of students with comparable score histories on that subject-matter test.

The numerical value for the Mean SGP for the inquiry is displayed in the upper right of each graph.

The Student Growth Report is updated annually in mid-to-late fall. See the Recently Posted Reports page for when the report was last updated.

Due to no state testing in 2019-20 and low participation in state testing in 2020-21, the grade levels for which growth data are available will be limited to school years 2021-22, 2022-23, and 2023-24. Growth data is expected to be fully restored to pre-pandemic grade levels starting with 2024-25. The table below describes which assessments, grades, and subjects are expected to have student growth reported over the next few years. 

Use the Location and Report Settings to explore student growth rates by different categories such as school year, grade, and subject (math, ELA, social studies, or science). Data can also be filtered by categories such race/ethnicity, gender, students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged, English language learners, homeless, and migrant students.

Data view options include:

• Count – the number of students in each growth category
• Percent – the percentage of students in each growth category

See the MI School Data Quick Start Guide for the basics of navigating the site and customizing a report.

Location Options

These options can be customized in the Location and Report Settings.

Locations Setting options: Statewide, ISD, District and School

The Center for Educational Performance and Information collects the data used to compile this report. CEPI’s Michigan Student Data System is used to provide students’ high school building, district, and intermediate school district information as well as demographics. More information about this application can be found in the MSDS Collection Details Manual.

The Michigan Department of Education Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability, which sets policies for assessment administration, provided the test data.

If you have questions not addressed here or in the linked resources, please contact CEPI customer support at cepi@michigan.gov.

Disclosure Avoidance

To protect the privacy of individual students, CEPI applies data suppression rules to sensitive data when report settings would yield fewer than 10 students in a given group. Complementary groups may also be suppressed. In some cases, values less than 10 may be shown when there is no risk of identifying individual students. Secure users can log in to view unsuppressed data for their authorized location. Please see How CEPI Protects Education Data for more information.

Report Labels

See the glossary for additional terms and acronyms used on MI School Data.

Mean SGP: The average of the individual student growth percentile scores of students assessed on a given subject, in each group.

Student Growth Percentile: The degree to which a student has learned compared to a group of academic peers who had a comparable score on the previous test (or multiple previous tests) in a subject.

Student Growth Percentile Categories: The three categories of student growth include Above Average Growth, Average Growth and Below Average Growth.

• Above Average Growth: 70th to 99th percentile
• Average Growth: 30th to 69th percentile
• Below Average Growth: 1st to 29th percentile

Data Calculations

The Mean SGP is calculated by adding the individual SGP scores from the given group and dividing by the total number of students in that group.

• Mean SGP = Total of All SGP / Total number of students

Once the mean SGP is determined, the students are distributed into growth categories. There are three categories:

• Above Average Growth (70th – 99th percentile)
• Average Growth (30th – 69th percentile)
• Below Average Growth (1st – 29th percentile)

For example, in school year 2015-16, 615,846 students were assessed in mathematics statewide. A Student Growth Percentile was calculated for each student, based on the results of the current year test, the prior year test, and comparable prior test scores on the given subject.

Once individual SGPs were determined for each student, a mean SGP was calculated. For school year 2015-16, the mean SGP for mathematics was 49.8.

Students are then divided into the growth categories using the percentile categories mentioned above. For that school year, the breakout is as follows:

• 180,345 (29.3%) are in the Above Average Growth category
• 245,330 (39.8%) are in the Average Growth category
• 190,171 (30.9%) are in the Below Average Growth category