116 | NW EA 200 8 RIT Scale Norms

that this is not always true for individual students, it can be difficult to explain when we see much
less growth one year than they made the previous year. In fact, both positive and negative
changes in growth and achievement estimates for individual students are commonplace in most
large datasets of longitudinal student performance. This is illustrated well in Figure 6.1.

15th percentile 50th pe rce ntile 85th percentile

Instructional Weeks

Figure 6.1. Reading growth trajectories for students ending grade 2 in three different
positions in the achievement distribution.

Shown in the figure are the score histories of 300 students. All students represented were
randomly selected from those who had a RIT score in at the end of grade 2 that was within two RIT
points of either the 15th, 50th, or 85th percentile rank in reading. In addition, each student had a
beginning-of-year and an end-of-year test score for all grades 3 through 6. Instructional weeks
were determined in the manner described in Chapter 2. The small rectangle close to the Y-axis of
each panel represents the range of initial RIT scores from the end of grade 2. The trend line in
each panel is the result of fitting a quadratic growth model to the data.

In each panel there is an ascending growth curve across the 140 instructional week period. If we
focus in each panel on the differences from the green box to the points located at zero instructional
weeks, we see the great variability in scores from the end of one school year to the beginning of
the next; a variability that is largely mimicked throughout the panel. Moving across panels, from
lower to higher levels of initial status, the occasion-to-occasion variability shrinks somewhat.

© Northwest Evaluation Association, Lake Oswego, Oregon, 2008