Can We Measure Student Potential?

• In Event: 29.082 - Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: 29.082-17 - Issues in School Assessment

Abstract

In this paper, we outline a non-linear growth model for a construct of interest to educational researchers: potential. Potential is conceptualized as having three components—ability, capacity, and availability—where ability is the amount of skill a student is estimated to have at a given time-point, capacity is the maximum amount of ability a student is predicted to be able to develop across time-points, and availability is the difference between capacity and ability at any particular time-point. We show that a non-linear Michaelis-Menten growth function is capable of providing estimates of each of the components of potential. Then, we provide an illustrative example using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten dataset to demonstrate this model as applied to educational data.

Authors

• Denis Dumas, University of Denver

• Daniel McNeish, University of Maryland