Data SGP

Data SGP (Student Growth Progress) provides an aggregated measure of student growth that compares students against their academic peers across various test sections. Teachers and administrators can use Data sgp to quickly evaluate whether each student grew more, less or equal to his or her peers within their grade level, subject area and year group, or any areas in which performance is not progressing as anticipated. While available on various reports, Data SGP provides the greatest value when used over time to track each individual student’s development over time.

Estimating a student’s true SGP requires knowledge of current and prior test scores as well as background variables about them, which is highly correlated to student backgrounds; as a result, true SGPs for each student will depend upon covariates from their background which influence it directly or indirectly. This source of variance represents potential bias that is easily eliminated through running a value-added model which regresses test scores on teacher fixed effects as well as student background variables.

Although understanding the nature of variability is key to understanding its benefits, aggregating SGPs also offers significant advantages. One potential benefit may include providing teachers with an easily understandable measure of student achievement that overcomes measurement error at individual student level; however, our evidence indicates that this advantage could be counteracted by student background characteristics being an integral component of estimated SGP variance which would be difficult to isolate using traditional value-added modeling techniques.

The sgptData_LONG data set is an anonymized panel data set with student assessment records from 8 windows (3 windows annually) over multiple years in LONG format. It includes data about each student’s content area, scale score, grade level and achievement level from multiple years. Furthermore, demographic/student categorization variables used to create student aggregates via summarizeSGP function.

SGPdata is a software package designed to make accessing SGPdata simple and straightforward, supporting both Wide and Long format longitudinal student data sets. The package provides two sample WIDE and LONG data sets (sgpData_WIDE and sgpData_LONG, respectively) to assist with setting up your data. Access them from the Data tab of the student report or import your own spreadsheet data directly. Once your data has been loaded, SGP analyses provide an effective means of visualizing results. Furthermore, downloading SGPdata is free for all users – making this tool essential for improving student outcomes. Enabling educators to analyze data and identify areas for improvement is one way of helping educators enhance the quality of instruction. Making data easier to access will also shorten time taken to identify issues while speeding up feedback timeframes.