Data SGP (Student Growth Progress) is a metric that tracks student achievement progress over time using longitudinal test score data. SGP provides useful insight for informing instruction, assessing student/teacher performance and supporting educator evaluation systems.
SGP metrics differ from standard percentile scores in that they provide information on relative student performance as opposed to absolute score levels. Specifically, growth percentages tell educators how much the students’ raw assessment score has grown compared to their academic peers. This allows educators to more easily identify students that need additional support and differentiate classroom instruction for high performing students. It also provides educators with a tool for communicating to stakeholders that proficiency targets must be reached within a specified time frame; something that is often difficult to do with standard test score comparisons or traditional percentile measures alone.
To use SGP analyses, the user must have access to longitudinal student assessment data in either WIDE or LONG format. Most errors associated with SGP analyses result from problems in preparing this data, and thus the SGP package includes an example WIDE format data set (sgpData) to demonstrate how this data should be structured for use with lower level functions like studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. A LONG format data set is also provided to assist with converting existing data into SGPdata format for analysis.
In addition to offering a convenient and user-friendly way to visualize student growth, the SGP package includes a variety of higher level functions that allow users to create more sophisticated graphical presentations of their SGP results as well as a number of additional analytical tools for analyzing student/teacher performance. This includes a method for generating student/teacher “dashboard” displays that allow the user to quickly see a number of important indicators relating to a specific teacher or school/district.
Lastly, the SGP package offers a unique feature that distinguishes it from competing methodologies: it allows schools to establish multi-year growth standards based on official state achievement targets/goals. This enables the user to communicate to stakeholders that proficiency goals must be reached by a certain date while simultaneously motivating teachers by linking their performance to meaningful, measurable targets. This capability is a key differentiator from competing methods and one that cannot be achieved with standard growth models or other approaches.
As an open source software project, SGP is built and run in the R programming environment. Therefore, it requires a computer with R installed. R is available for Windows, OSX, and Linux and can be downloaded for free from the CRAN website. Running SGP analyses assumes some familiarity with the R programming language; resources are available on GitHub to help users get started. The sgpData vignette provides an introduction to the SGP package and provides detailed instructions for getting up and running with the code. In addition, a series of videos are available to further explain the SGP package and its usage.