Data sgp is a tool that teachers and administrators use to analyze the performance of students. It can help determine how well academically a student is progressing and also pinpoint areas that need improvement. It can be helpful to educators as it allows them to make informed decisions on how to improve the performance of their students. The process is simple and easy to understand.
The sgpData dataset provides the raw data for SGP analyses. It consists of up to five years of student test score history, including the Badger year. The first column of the file, ID, provides the unique student identifier. The next five columns, GRADE_2013, GRADE_2014, GRADE_2015, GRADE_2016, and GRADE_2017 provide the grade level assessment scores for each year of the student’s testing history. The final five columns, SS_2013, SS_2014, SS_2015, SS_2016, and SS_2017, provide the scale scores for each year of the student’s tests. The SGP displayed for each year is the sum of all of these scale scores divided by the student’s scale score at the beginning of the school year.
A student’s SGP is determined by comparing his or her score on a state assessment to the scores of 85 percent of his or her academic peers. A student’s SGP can be positive or negative. It does not necessarily indicate the student’s relative standing in the class or even within the grade level, as two students with very different scale scores may have the same SGP.
While SGPs are correlated with student covariates, the magnitude of these relationships can be difficult to interpret. In many cases, these correlations are due to unobserved student-level factors correlated with both the SGP and the observed student covariates. It is important to consider the potential impact of such confounding on accurate interpretations of SGP relationships with student covariates.
To help address these concerns, sgpData includes a data analysis vignette that describes how to use the sgpData dataset with the SGP package to conduct various kinds of SGP analyses. The vignette is available in the SGP package GitHub repository and in the sgpData wiki.
The vignette describes how to create an SGP from a set of student data, and how to evaluate the results of that SGP. It also discusses the assumptions that are required for a model to accurately estimate a student’s growth rate. In particular, it highlights how the SGP method is able to provide insight about the amount of student growth that is necessary for a student to reach an achievement target or goal. It also illustrates how multi-year growth standards are established based upon official state achievement targets/goals. This is a unique feature of the SGP methodology that differentiates it from other growth modeling approaches. This article builds upon this basic idea to show how the SGP methodology can be used to stipulate what growth, expressed as a per/year growth standard, is needed for a student to meet an achievement target. Stipulating both what the achievement target is as well as the growth required to achieve it can be a very powerful and informative metric for all stakeholders involved in student learning.