Data SGP (SGP) is an assessment tool designed to assist teachers and administrators in measuring students’ relative progress against their academic peers over time. This data can be useful in determining whether a student has outpaced, outshone, or been on par with his or her peers over time. SGP measures relative growth on a scale from 1-99 with higher numbers representing increased growth versus lower numbers signaling decreased progress.
SGPs are calculated by analyzing historical growth trajectories of Star examinees, then projecting their future progress. This projection takes into account each student’s current performance level and how many additional points of growth they require in order to attain proficiency – for instance if they fall within the bottom 20% of students for their grade level, 8 points improvement is necessary in order to meet proficiency. Updates of student SGPs may also occur periodically to reflect new data available about growth trends for individual students.
The SGP data set “sgpData” is an anonymized panel data set consisting of five years’ annual, vertically scaled assessment data in WIDE format that serves as an example data set used with lower level functions like studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. Updates to sgpData occur periodically and can be found within the SGP Package under prepareSGP or INSTRUCTOR_STUDENT lookup file sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER; these higher level functions also use this data set in updatingABCSGP or updateSGP functions abcSGP or updateSGP functions abcSGP or updateSGP functions for higher level functions abcSGP or updateSGP functions for using data within their functions for using student growth projections or projections functions for analysis.
SGP now includes a feature that displays a graph of student progress over time. This graph can be found in the right-hand panel and allows the user to zoom in, pan left/right, select different time periods of student performance and highlight areas that may require extra efforts or support.
SGP provides more than just visual charts of student progression; we can also display bar charts comparing individual students’ progress against those of their peers across a number of categories. Each category can be expanded, while clicking any individual category displays more comprehensive statistical information about its content.
Teachers and administrators require current and historical SGP data in order to make informed decisions regarding a student’s next steps, which SGP offers both as historic student growth percentiles as well as current projections. Historical data is collected in our SGP database by gathering screening windows that correspond with our school year calendar. Current SGPs are updated automatically each day and available from the Star Growth Report, which can be accessed by selecting one or more timeframes from the “Timeframe” drop-down list. SGPs provide teachers and administrators with valuable data for making decisions regarding student learning, teaching and growth. SGPs serve as an indicator of the amount of growth necessary for a student to meet or surpass academic benchmarks.