The REL conducted a study for the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) to investigate the feasibility of constructing a school-level measure of students' academic growth from kindergarten to grade 3, and to assess the validity and precision of that measure. To support its understanding and use of the measure, the REL worked with MSDE to create this memo describing the study methodology so that MSDE can build its analytical capacity to estimate K-3 student-level growth measures for future cohorts of students.
