New data from researchers at Stanford allows us to see where students are making the largest gains from year to year. And an interactive graphic created by the New York Times lets readers click on individual school districts to see how they are doing. Emily Badgers and Kevin Quealy explain:

 It’s true that children in prosperous districts tend to test well, while children in poorer districts on average score lower. But in this analysis, which measures how scores grow as student cohorts move through school, the Stanford researcher Sean Reardon argues that it’s possible to separate some of the advantages of socioeconomics from what’s actually happening in schools.

Reardon argues that states that rate and reward schools based on average test scores rather than the growth in scores are using the wrong metric.

In “Stop Focusing on Proficiency Rates When Evaluating Schools,” Mike Petrilli and Aaron Churchill argued for the importance of grading schools based on growth scores.

— Education Next