This paper situates current growth-to-standard approaches within a larger domain of statistical models, including those based solely on achievement as well as more traditional growth models. Within this context, we demonstrate that current growth-to-standard approaches present an impoverished view of student progress because they lack a normative foundation. To remedy this, student growth percentiles are introduced as a normative description of growth capable of accommodating, informing, and extending criterion-referenced aims like those embedded within No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
