Data Sgp is a tool that allows schools to measure student growth and achievement against official state achievement targets/goals. It also enables schools to effectively communicate the complexity of such requirements as well as to show how programs may reach proficiency faster than anticipated even with limited resources.
In order to run analyses with data sgp, you will need to prepare your assessment data in advance. This is a process that typically takes three steps: importing/preparing data, creating aggregations and performing analysis/interpretation/writing reports. OSPI staff is available to offer training and support throughout this process.
The sgptData_LONG data set contains up to five years of student test score history. This includes the Badger year, but 2014-15 growth percentiles are not generated. In addition to the sgptData_LONG, there are a number of other data sets that can be used for SGP analyses. Each of these data sets contain different variables and have unique uses.
SGP calculations are more complex than VAMs, requiring additional coding and processing in order to provide the same information. As a result, the bulk of your time will likely be spent preparing the data for SGP analyses. Once the data is prepared, the actual analysis/interpretation of SGP results should only take about 30-60 minutes to complete for most users.
When analyzing SGP results, it is important to remember that these are not absolute measures of achievement. SGP results are relative rankings of students’ achievement levels compared to other students in the school. This information is much more useful for evaluating student growth than absolute levels of achievement.
An example of this is a student who achieves a scale score growth of 70 points in one year, but this does not necessarily mean that the student’s level of achievement is deemed “adequate” by stakeholders. In addition, a simple comparison of this growth to other students without taking into account their starting scores would yield a faulty comparison.
The lower level functions that do the actual calculation of SGP percentiles, studentGrowthPercentiles and studentSGP, require the following variables: VALID_CASE, CONTENT_AREA, YEAR, ID, SCALE_SCORE, GRADE and ACHIEVEMENT_LEVEL (on is required if running individual-level student growth and achievement plots). All other variables are demographic/student categorization variables used to create student aggregates by the summarizeSGP function.
This article is intended to be a resource for school leaders to use to understand how to read and interpret SGP data and the associated SGP reports. The purpose is not to be comprehensive, but to highlight the most important aspects of this methodology. Additional information can be found on the SGP website, including links to training opportunities. If you have questions that are not answered here, please contact the SGP help desk. We are always happy to assist.