Data Sgp is a tool for teachers that leverages longitudinal student assessment data to produce statistical growth achievement plots. It provides educators with a clear picture of student progress, helping them to quickly identify struggling students and pinpoint areas of improvement. Data Sgp offers a powerful alternative to traditional assessments, making it easier to assess student performance and make informed decisions about classroom instruction.
SGP measures relative student performance by comparing a current grade-level test score to the performance of academic peers. The higher the score, the more the student has grown relative to their peers. The percentile rank indicates how well a student has performed on the test compared to their academic peers, with scores in the 75th percentile or above indicating that the student has demonstrated more relative growth than about 75 percent of their academic peers. Educators can use SGP to help them identify the most effective instructional strategies for all learners, not just high performers.
To conduct SGP analyses, an educator must have access to longitudinal (time dependent) student assessment data. This type of data is typically stored in WIDE format, with each case/row representing a single student and columns representing variables associated with the student at various points in time. The SGP package offers wide and long format data sets, sgpData_LONG and sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER respectively, that can be used with SGP analysis.
The lower level functions that do the actual calculations in data sgp, studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections, require WIDE formatted data. However, most of the higher level wrapper functions in data sgp – including those that create visual reports – are designed to be run on LONG formatted data. This is especially important for those conducting operational analyses, as the process of preparing and managing LONG formatted data set is simpler than importing and working with WIDE data sets.
When analyzing SGP data, it is important to keep in mind that the curve pictured on SGP reports does not represent a normal distribution. In reality, the curve represents the number of students that fall into each of 10 or decile groups, which may be influenced by state policies and regulations regarding testing windows. It is also important to note that while a particular school or district may have more or less students in certain percentages, the overall distribution of the curve across the state should be similar.
While SGPs are an excellent metric for assessing student progress, they should be utilized as a supplement to other data sources, rather than as a replacement for existing assessments. Additionally, educators should not rely solely on SGPs for evaluation purposes and they are encouraged to wait until the state’s SGP data is fully stabilized before using it for high stakes educator evaluation. This will ensure that the results are accurate and meaningful. Thanks to all for your patience as we work together to implement this important new tool in Michigan!