Educational Growth Curve Modeling

Educational growth curve modeling is a longitudinal multilevel technique for describing and explaining how individual students change over time on an outcome such as reading or mathematics achievement. Building on the hierarchical linear models framework formalized by Bryk and Raudenbush (1987) and the applied longitudinal treatment of Singer and Willett (2003), it fits each student a personal trajectory — an intercept and one or more slopes — and then models how those personal growth parameters vary across students and relate to learner characteristics, classrooms, and schools.