Data sgp is a set of classes, functions and data that is used to calculate student growth percentiles. These percentiles provide a way for students to be fairly compared, even though they may enter school at different levels. This allows teachers to identify areas where instruction is not being effective or where additional resources are needed. It also helps administrators make informed decisions regarding the overall academic health of their district or school.
Statistical Growth Plots (SGPs) display the percentile rank of a student’s current test score relative to students with similar prior achievement level and provide more accurate measures of achievement than unadjusted scores. SGPs are used by educators to identify academic progress and areas for improvement, and can help students reach their learning goals.
SGP analyses use two steps to compensate for estimation errors: 1) the student’s current performance is compared to an estimate of their prior performance and 2) the student’s growth is estimated relative to all students with comparable score histories on that subject-matter test. The lower level functions that do the actual calculations in SGP (studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections) are accompanied by higher-level functions, called wrappers, that simplify operational SGP analysis source code.
To run SGP analyses, you will need a computer with a 64-bit version of Python and a recent version of the operating system (OS). The SGP package is available through the python install command or from GitHub.
Once the software has been installed, you will need to obtain the student growth data for the year(s) of interest. This can be obtained from your district’s Star account using the “Datasets” tab.
The sgpData table contains information about the student’s progression over the past five years. The first column, id, provides the unique student identifier. The next 5 columns, SS_2013, SS_2014, SS_2015, SS_2016, and SS_2017, provide the student’s scale scores on each of the statewide assessments for that period. The last column, sgpScore, shows the statewide growth percentile that would be expected for a student with that grade level and assessment type.
In addition to calculating a student’s SGP, these tables can also be analyzed to determine the percentage of content the student has not yet covered. This is useful to curriculum coordinators and principals to see where gaps in instruction might be occurring, and can also indicate whether or not a student has the ability to meet their state’s achievement targets/goals. The sgpData_CONTENTS table is especially valuable for teachers whose classrooms have a mixed group of students with varying academic abilities and needs. In this case, the sgpScore can help teachers to differentiate their lessons to best support all students’ learning. Lastly, these tables can be used by district and school leaders to inform their educational decision making, and by parents in communicating with teachers about the progress of their children.