Data sgp is an effective tool that helps educators better understand the progress students are making and the impact of their efforts. The tool compares a student’s assessment score with the scores of others of similar academic histories to reveal insights about his or her performance relative to peers. It also allows educators to formulate plans for enhancing a student’s learning and achievement. For these reasons, OSPI encourages schools to learn more about the tool. To help, we’ve developed a series of videos and podcasts that explain how to use this resource and some basic concepts about student growth percentiles.

Student growth percentiles are based on comparing an individual student’s score on one exam section with the scores of other students who have taken the same test. This information is weighted to determine a student’s rank within his or her cohort, with higher ranks representing greater improvement. While useful, there are some limitations to this measure that are important to keep in mind.

For example, a low score on a single test section could represent difficulty with the subject matter or an absence of effort on behalf of the student. Additionally, it is possible that a student’s rank may be biased due to differences in school/teacher characteristics or baseline cohort design. Therefore, it is recommended that educators review their SGPs with the assistance of an experienced specialist.

The majority of SGP analyses require access to longitudinal (time dependent) student assessment data. This data is typically stored in WIDE format where each case/row represents a unique student and columns represent variables associated with the student at different times. The SGP package provides a set of exemplar WIDE and LONG format data sets (sgpData and sgpData_LONG, respectively) to assist in preparing this type of data for analysis.

Using sgpData is essentially a two step process: (1) preparing the data for analysis and (2) running the SGP functions to generate SGPs. While the bulk of time required for these steps is spent on data preparation, the SGP functions are designed to be as simple as possible.

For this reason, we recommend that districts consult the SGP data analysis vignette for more detailed documentation on the preparation and usage of sgpData. The sgpData vignette is particularly helpful for those who intend to run SGP analyses operationally on a regular basis since it covers the most common scenarios. We also have additional SGP vignettes that cover more specialized analyses.