The goal of data sgp is to provide educators with tools that assist them in accurately assessing student progress and pinpointing areas for improvement within their classrooms. Data SGP compares assessment scores of individual students against similar academically-similar students to reveal insights into a student’s relative performance – information that can help educators formulate plans for enhancing a student’s learning.

In order to run data sgp analyses, an educator must have access to longitudinal (time dependent) student assessment data. This is typically stored in WIDE format with each case/row representing a single student and columns representing variables associated with that student at different points in time. The data sgp package offers both wide sgpData and long sgpData formats for use with data sgp analyses.

To run a data sgp analysis, the educator must first select a student in the SGP summary report and then click on the “SGP Data” tab. This will display a spreadsheet with five columns. The first column, SS_2013, provides the initial assessment score for the selected student. The remaining four columns, SS_2014, SS_2015, SS_2016 and SS_2017, provide the student’s assessments scores for each of these years.

The SGP data set also includes a fifth column, SS_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER, which is an anonymized lookup table that associates a teacher with each test record in the long sgpData format. Educators can utilize the sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER column to determine which teachers their students have been taught by and then use this information to determine if a student’s growth rate was higher than, lower than or about as expected.

SGP scores are calculated through comparing a student’s test score on an exam section against the tests of other students who have similar academic histories, and then weighting these comparisons to derive an individual student rank that can be scaled on a 1-99 basis with higher numbers signifying more relative growth. It is important to note that a low score in one test section could mean either difficulty with the subject matter or no effort on behalf of the student, so it is not always a reliable indicator of improvement.

A key feature of SGP is that it allows schools to establish achievement targets/goals based on current grade-level test results and then track student growth over time toward those goals. This is an extremely valuable tool for communicating to stakeholders that proficiency must be reached within a certain time frame and for helping to ensure that most students stay “inside the curve” as they progress toward their target score.

As a data analysis method, data sgp is unique in that it allows schools to identify both high achieving students and those who need additional support to meet their goals. It is important to note, however, that SGP should not replace student achievement targets/goals; rather it can be used to provide additional context for them by demonstrating what must be achieved in order to reach them. This can be particularly useful for accelerated programs, which can be difficult to assess using traditional testing methods.