Data sgp is an important tool for educators to help them better understand the progress their students are making in specific content areas. The tool compares assessment scores of a student to those of academically similar peers over time to reveal insights into the strength and weaknesses of a student’s performance. The resulting information allows educators to identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as inform the development of plans to improve student achievement.
The SGP is calculated by comparing a student’s current assessment score to their assessment score from the previous year. The resulting growth percentile indicates where the student’s score falls among the scores of other students with comparable academic histories. For example, a student’s score of 85 indicates they performed better than 85 percent of similar students. A growth score of 0 shows that the student scored below the minimum required by their grade level on the state assessments.
SGPs work similarly to other percentiles and they range from 1 to 99. A SGP of 85 means that the student demonstrated more growth in a content area than 85 percent of other students with comparable assessment scores. To view a student’s growth score, go to the student profile/growth dashboard and select the “Student Growth” tab. The graphs that appear display a SGP for each individual assessment that a student took in grades 4th – 11th. All scale scores for each student are normalized to a common scale of 0-100 for graphing purposes but the actual scale score is displayed in the data grid below the graphs.
The sgpData data set is an anonymized panel data set which contains 5 years of annual, vertically scaled, student assessment information in WIDE format (where each row represents a single case/student and each column represents a variable at different points in time). The sgpData data set includes variables such as ID, CONTENT_AREA_YEAR, SCALE_SCORE, and GRADE, as well as a teacher-to-student lookup table (sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER) to associate teachers with each test record.
SGP analyses are often thought of as ‘big data’ research, however the sgpData data set is relatively small in comparison to other datasets used with the package, such as global Facebook interactions. Nevertheless, data preparation and analysis can be daunting for many users of the SGP package. To simplify these analyses, the sgpData vignette provides a step-by-step guide to preparing and using the data for SGP analysis. Additional detailed documentation on using sgpData and other wide format data sets with the SGP package is available in the sgpData analysis vignette and the wider Using sgpData vignette.