Data SGP – A Powerful Tool for Educators and Administrators
Data SGP provides educators with a powerful tool to support student learning and growth. It uses a combination of multiple assessment data points to calculate a student’s current SGP for a given subject and to predict their future performance. The tool also uses historical growth trajectories of Star examinees to help educators and administrators understand what the range of possible SGPs could be for a particular examinee.
While student achievement measures provide valuable information on student performance, it can be difficult to interpret those results without context. SGPs take the guesswork out of student growth by comparing students to other similarly situated students, regardless of their raw score differences. This allows educators and parents to see how a student is progressing through a course or curriculum, as well as how that progress compares with their peers across the state.
SGPs are calculated for each student by comparing their most recent assessment score to the same assessment from one or more prior testing windows. These prior assessments can be from different years or in a variety of content areas, but all must have the same grade level and time of administration to be included in the calculation. The most recent assessment is used to determine the current SGP, and the average of the two previous SGPs is calculated as the projected SGP.
The sgpData dataset is an anonymized, panel data set consisting of five years of annual, vertically scaled, assessment data. The first column, sgpData_ID, provides the unique student identifier. The next five columns, SS_2013, SS_2014, SS_2015, and SS_2016, provide the scale scores associated with the students in each of these years. The last column, sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER, provides an integer value that indicates the teachers with which each student has been assessed in the past five years.
A student’s SGP can be analyzed in many ways using a variety of tools, including higher level wrapper functions such as studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. To learn more about how to use these and other higher level SGP analysis functions, consult the sgpData analysis vignette.
SGPs can be analyzed in a number of ways to inform and enhance educator decisions and practices. Individual SGPs can be reviewed by teachers and school-wide data teams to identify areas for improvement. Educators should also incorporate SGPs into their SLOs process and continuous improvement efforts. Lastly, district leaders should consider incorporating SGP data into teacher evaluations in the future.