Data sgp is an analysis tool for longitudinal student assessment data that creates statistical growth plots (SGP) that illustrate students’ progress relative to their academic peers. SGPs are calculated using students’ standardized test scores with covariate information based on their prior testing history. They are designed to provide more accurate measurements of growth than traditional percentiles.
In Wisconsin, SGPs can be used to help teachers identify both high achieving students and those who need additional support to meet their goals. They can also help school districts to articulate realistic achievement targets by clearly demonstrating how much student achievement must grow in order to achieve the target. They can also be used to assess accelerated programs so that the majority of students continue to make adequate progress, rather than being held back by a small percentage of students who do not meet their growth goals.
The data sgp website provides access to an extensive collection of statewide student growth data as well as the software tools that can be used to analyze and display this data. These tools can be used by individual schools and districts to view current student SGPs as well as previous year’s SGPs. The site also includes several informative podcasts that walk users through the process of creating a data set and using one of the data tools to view the results.
In addition to the SGP tools, the site contains an extensive library of exemplary SGPs created by schools and districts around the country. The goal is to share these examples and facilitate the creation of similar SGPs by other educators. These examples can be used to help schools and districts develop their own SGPs or as models for other educational organizations.
SGPs are calculated by comparing a student’s performance on an annual assessment with that of other students who have had prior testing history in the same content area. The SGP ranks the student’s performance by comparing it to those of her academic peers, with a higher ranking indicating that the student’s score improved more than the average or expected score for her group.
SGP analyses can be conducted with either WIDE or LONG format data. The SGPdata package provides an example WIDE format data set (sgpData) to simulate time dependent data used with the lower level functions studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections and a LONG format data set sgpData_LONG to assist in the conversion to this data format for use with the higher level wrapper functions like prepareSGP. In operational SGP analyses, it is recommended that the LONG format be used for ease of preparation and management of the resulting SGPs.