Data sgp is an analytical tool that can help educators understand and interpret student growth percentageile (SGP) results. Educators need to possess a thorough understanding of SGP methodologies and assumptions in order to use this tool correctly and effectively. To facilitate this understanding, the SGP package provides tutorials and vignettes. The sgpData vignette serves as an exemplar for the data format that should be used when performing SGP analyses.
The SGP package also provides a set of functions that can be used to create, visualize and analyze student growth percentiles from raw data sets. These functions can be used for a variety of purposes, including comparing student performance over time and evaluating the impact of interventions and other factors on students’ learning.
These functions can be used on both raw student-level data and aggregated school or district level data. In addition, the SGP package offers a variety of pre-built visualizations that can be easily customized using the user interface. These visualizations can be saved and reused as templates for future analysis or as a starting point to create custom, unique visualizations.
SGP identifies students’ academic progression by converting their assessment scores to a common scale. For example, the mSGP score of a student in grade 3 is translated to a 1-4 score by dividing the student’s mSGP score by the average mSGP score for the state. This information is then combined with the student’s overall evaluation score to determine his or her final teacher rating.
A student’s mSGP score is determined by a combination of several different factors, including the student’s past test scores and current assessment results. In addition, a teacher’s overall evaluation rating is determined by a combination of his or her classroom practice score and student growth percentile (SGP) score. The SGP percentages are then compared to the teacher’s peers across New Jersey to determine the overall evaluation rating.
To access SGP data, teachers must submit their course rosters to NJ SMART. Teachers should verify that their course rosters are accurate before submission to ensure accuracy of their mSGP score. Teachers who do not have sufficient data to calculate an mSGP are not eligible for a teacher rating. mSGPs are only available for teachers who teach certain English language arts or mathematics grades that have valid baseline data and comparable test scores.
SGP data is available in a number of formats, including the WIDE format used in this vignette. More detailed documentation on how to use sgpData and WIDE data formats for SGP analyses can be found in the SGP vignettes and tutorials. The sgpData vignette also serves as an exemplar for the data format to be used with lower level SGP functions such as studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. This enables more educators to utilize the power of SGP and improve student learning.