Data sgp is the longitudinal comparison of student assessment scores against academically similar students that can assist educators in identifying student achievement trends and supporting instructional decisions. It can also inform educator evaluative processes at the district and school level.
The statewide assessment data used for data sgp analyses can vary greatly in terms of its quality, quantity and format. This can make the process of using this information for instruction and assessing teacher performance challenging. Fortunately, there are many tools available to help with the process.
For example, an individual student may have a score of 370 on the state’s English language arts (ELA) test this year and a score of 300 last year. This is a great increase in scale score but it does not provide much insight into how the student made this progress.
To gain the most value from this type of information, a student’s scale score growth must be measured against that of academically similar students. This can be done by calculating a student’s student growth percentiles. Student growth percentiles can help identify whether a student’s scale score increase was above, below or at the mean for their grade level. In addition, the SGP metric can help schools determine which students are making adequate progress and which need additional support in reaching their learning goals.
This is a critical piece of information for teachers to have in their toolkit as they work with students. The SGP metric can be used to identify the students that need additional instructional assistance and to help teachers develop individual student learning goals for these students. It can also help teachers plan for future instructional interventions and activities for these students.
In addition to identifying students who are most at risk, SGP can help teachers decide which of their current students should be accelerated or promoted. In this way, SGP can help a school’s leadership team to ensure that all students meet their achievement targets on time and in a reasonable number of years.
Educators can use this information to improve classroom practices, inform teacher evaluation processes and support research initiatives. The SGP data can also be shared with parents to provide them with a more complete picture of their child’s academic progress.
SGP analyses require longitudinal student assessment data and appropriate software or hardware for running calculations. There can be significant time spent on data preparation prior to conducting SGP analyses but the actual analysis is relatively simple once all of the pieces are in place.
The SGPdata package installed as part of the SGPtoolkit includes exemplar WIDE format data sets that mimic time dependent data and are used with functions such as studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections as well as LONG format data sets to facilitate converting existing longitudinal assessment data into the required formats for running these analyses. In general, preparing data in the LONG format tends to be preferred for all but the most simplest one-off analyses as this format has numerous preparation and usage benefits over the WIDE format.