Using Alternative Student Growth Measures for Evaluating Teacher Performance: What the Literature Says

States increasingly are interested in incorporating measures of student achievement growth in teacher evaluations. But the typical measure of student growth—progress on state assessments from one school year to the next—usually covers only reading and math and only in grades 4–8. Members of REL Mid-Atlantic’s Teacher Evaluation Research Alliance wanted to understand more about the alternatives, and the REL produced this literature review in response. This report summarizes the evidence on measures of student achievement growth used in teacher evaluation that do not rely on traditional annual state assessments, and that instead use commercially available assessments, locally developed common assessments, and teacher-developed student learning objectives.