Comparative Growth on STAAR now used for ASPIRE Award calculations
For the 2015–2016 ASPIRE Award model, the district will use Comparative Growth on STAAR instead of EVAAS when calculating award amounts.
Comparative Growth, which was already being used in other district evaluations, measures the progress of a teacher’s students on a given assessment compared to all other students in the district who start at the same test score level.
Students are placed into groups depending on which test language and version they took in the prior year and current year. From each group, all students who scored the same scale score in the prior year form a cohort (with a minimum of 25 students per cohort). For each cohort meeting the minimum threshold of 25 students, the current year STAAR scale scores are rank-ordered. These ranks are converted to percentiles, and a teacher’s score is the median percentile score of his/her students.
This change was made after the Board of Trustees voted in June not to extend the contract with SAS EVAAS®, which meant EVAAS for the 2015–2016 school year was not calculated. The 2015–2016 ASPIRE Award Model, which previously used EVAAS as an award indicator, was amended to use Comparative Growth on STAAR as a replacement indicator.
The 2016–2017 Award Model indicators will be the same as those from the 2015–2016 ASPIRE Award Model, but only teachers and school leaders from the 23 campuses funded in part by the TIF 4 federal grant will be considered for the award. Due to budget constraints, district funding for the ASPIRE Award program was eliminated. However, the TIF 4 grant funds the performance pay for teachers and school leaders at the TIF4 campuses through the 2016–2017 school year.
The 2015–2016 amended ASPIRE Award model is posted at http://portal.battelleforkids.org/Aspire/awards/aspire-award/2015-2016-program-resources, and information on Comparative Growth can be found at http://portal.battelleforkids.org/Aspire/growth-data.
If you have any questions, please contact the ASPIRE Support Team at aspireaward@houstonisd.org.
