Student Growth Measures for Principals

Half of each principal's evaluation comes from how much their students learn over the course of the year. Student growth measures are a method for determining how much academic progress students are making by measuring growth between two points in time.
The challenge for measuring student growth is that not all principals can use the same assessment. For the purpose of principal evaluations, there are three ways to measure student achievement.

Types of Student Growth Measures

  1. Value-Added
    If available, principals must include Value-Added data in the student growth measure.  If allowed by law, the local education agency may also use local student growth measures. 
  2. Approved Vendor Assessments
    If Value-Added data is not available, districts or schools can use an average of the relevant ODE approved vendor assessment teacher-level ratings.
  3. Locally Determined Measures
    There are three types of LEA-Determined measures for principals with no Value-Added and no Approved Vendor Assessments. Types of locally determined measures include:
  • *An average of all teachers' student growth ratings in the building
  • Building-Based Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) process for using measures that are specific to relevant building goals and priorities and aligned with Ohio Improvement Process. Measures for SLOs must be district-approved and may include both direct and indirect measures such as:
    • Student achievement trends
    • Locally developed assessments
    • Progress on school improvement plans
    • Student course taking patterns, e.g. more students taking advanced courses, PSEO, etc.
  • Shared attribution. Measures to encourage collaborative goals and may include:
    • District Value-Added is recommended if available
    • Groups of schools (such as grade level buildings or regional areas within a district) may utilize an average Value-Added score
    • District-based SLOs
*Scoring Note: If a building administrator is using a growth measure based on an average of all teachers’ growth ratings, the administrator cannot be the sole approver or scorer of teacher SLOs.


More Questions?


Student Growth Measure and Alignment Specialists

Apryl Ealy (Northwest and Southwest Regions)
(937) 354-6010
Donna Huber (Central, Northeast and Southeast Regions)
(419) 295-9418
Last Modified: 9/19/2014 8:55:06 AM