Interest in Student Growth Modeling (SGM) and Value Added Modeling (VAM) arises from
educators concerned with measuring the effectiveness of teaching and other school activities
through changes in student performance as a companion and perhaps even an alternative to status.
Several formal statistical models have been proposed for year-to-year growth and these fall into at
least three clusters: simple change (e.g., differences on a vertical scale), residualized change (e.g.,
simple linear or quantile regression techniques), and value tables (varying salience of different
achievement level outcomes across two years). Several of these methods have been implemented by
states and districts. This paper reviews relevant literature and reports results of a data-based
comparison of six basic SGM models that may permit aggregating across teachers or schools to
provide evaluative information. Our investigation raises some issues that may compromise current
efforts to implement VAM in teacher and school evaluations and makes suggestions for both
practice and research based on the results.