Data sgp is a database that helps teachers track their students’ progress. It also allows them to identify which areas their students need more work in. This is especially helpful for struggling learners. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or administrator, learning about data sgp can help you make better decisions for your students. This article will provide you with an overview of the process and some tips on how to use it.
Student growth percentiles (SGPs) measure how much a student’s MCAS scores have improved or declined since their previous year’s tests. They are computed by comparing the current year’s score to a student’s academic peers, who are students in the same grade and assessment subject who have statistically similar assessment score histories. The current year’s score is then reported in terms of the student’s academic peer group, and the SGP is the percentage of that group that has achieved a higher or lower MCAS score than the student.
SGPs have become increasingly popular for evaluating both student and educator performance, as they offer a more holistic view of a student’s progress than raw test score gains alone. In addition, rankings of students against their academic peers are often perceived as fairer and more relevant to the evaluation of student achievement than merely examining unadjusted gains (Betebenner 2009). This has contributed to the increased popularity of SGPs as a part of accountability systems and educator evaluations.
While it is possible to conduct SGP analyses without incorporating these covariates, this will result in estimates that are substantially worse than those based on the full set of available information. The scatterplot in Figure 1(a) illustrates the magnitude of the error of conditional SGP estimates conditioned on only math scores (curve with triangles), on ELA and math scores plus the covariates (curve with +), and on both ELA and math plus the covariates.
The sgpData_LONG and sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER data sets that come with the SGP package contain the data needed for SGP analyses. The sgpData_LONG data set is in LONG format, and the sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER file contains anonymized instructor-student lookup information associated with each student’s test record. Please consult the SGP vignette for detailed instructions on working with these files for SGP analysis.
Using SGPs with WIDE or LONG formatted data is relatively straight forward. The SGP vignette contains more details about working with these files and the specifics of how to use the lower level functions studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. Alternatively, the SGP package provides wrapper functions abcSGP and updateSGP that simplify these steps to a single function call, making them more convenient for operational SGP analyses.