Data sgp is a collective of aggregated student performance information collected over time that teachers and administrators use to make instructional decisions. It includes individual-level measures like test scores and growth percentiles as well as aggregated measurements at the school and district levels including class size, attendance rates and graduation rates. Data sgp can be used to identify areas for improvement, inform classroom practices and evaluate schools/districts as well as support broader research initiatives.
The SGP Package has been developed to help districts make operational use of data sgp by making it easy to conduct student growth percentile (SGP) analyses. The lower level functions, studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections require WIDE formatted data whereas the higher level wrapper functions abcSGP and updateSGP can be used with LONG formatted data. In addition, the sgpData_LONG and sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER lookup tables provide a means to associate instructors with students by unique identifier associated with each student’s test record.
SGP measures student performance relative to the performance of other students with similar MCAS score histories. For example, an SGP score of 75 indicates that a student has made more progress in a subject area than about half of the students with comparable MCAS history. This measure helps educators and parents understand how much their students are growing in a particular subject area and provides them with a clear picture of their students’ progress.
To run SGP analyses, you need to prepare your data by ensuring that it meets the requirements outlined in the SGP documentation. The sgpData_LONG and the sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER files provide an exemplar set of data that models the formats required for the lower level SGP functions studentGrowthPercentiles and studentsGrowthProjections. The sgpData_LONG file contains the student identifier, grade level, content area, and a scale score. The sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER file contains the instructor identifier for each student.
There are 7 required variables when using LONG data with SGP analyses: VALID_CASE, CONTENT_AREA, YEAR, ID, SCALE_SCORE, GRADE and ACHIEVEMENT_LEVEL. The optional FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME variables are demographic/student categorization variables used for creating student aggregates by instructor or class. The sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER field is invaluable for connecting instructors to their students and enabling them to see how their individual teaching styles influence the student’s SGP. This is especially important when comparing students by content area and/or teacher. This allows the instructor to make adjustments in future lessons to better serve the needs of their student group. For this reason, it is recommended that the sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER variable be updated regularly as needed. This process is described in detail in the SGP Documentation.