Data SGP is a tool for estimating student growth potential. It helps teachers and schools identify students at risk of falling below state proficiency targets and make informed decisions about accelerating programs so all children reach their achievement goals by the target date. Data sgp also plays an invaluable role in assessing whether an individual student is ready to move up into another grade and determine if a program is effective.
SGP analyses require longitudinal student assessment data and appropriate software or hardware. Prep time may be substantial; once all files have been correctly prepared and calculations run successfully however running calculations is usually quick and simple. Any issues experienced with SGP analyses typically relate back to issues surrounding initial preparation of data – OSPI staff is always available for assistance if any arise.
The sgpData package provides both WIDE formatted sets that emulate time dependent data used by lower level functions like studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections and LONG formatted sets designed to facilitate higher level wrapper function use; when conducting operational analyses it is recommended that data in LONG format be utilized; doing so often makes updating future analyses much simpler than working with wide formatted data sets.
Value Added Models (VAMs), on the other hand, use scale scores as an input rather than targets/goals to calculate student achievement scores; this makes SGP less sensitive to classroom composition while still enabling educators to quickly identify students at risk of not meeting their achievement targets on time and assist them with accelerating academic progress.
SGP stands out as an accurate way to identify students who have met proficiency targets, which allows schools to quickly determine which students need additional instruction as they move forward and provide instruction accordingly. Furthermore, parents can use SGP as a powerful way of conveying expected learning progression for their child.
The sgpData_LONG set is an anonymous panel data set consisting of 8 windows (3 annually) of long formatted data for each content area in terms of YEAR, ID, SCALE_SCORE and GRADE variables. This data set was specifically created for Student Growth Point analyses and includes all necessary variables required for calculating student aggregates, SGP percentiles and projections. You may download it from our sgpData page; for further assistance check our sgpData_LONG guide page. The sgpData_LONG data set requires the SGPstateData meta-data for it to function correctly, making it the preferred format for operational SGP analyses. SGP percentiles and projections can be generated for any content area using the summarizeSGP() function. In order to generate one for an individual student, their first and last name are required; these can then be sorted by SGP to identify those with highest or lowest scores; although sorting by actual scale scores is sometimes more appropriate as this makes interpretation easier.