Data sgp – An Overview of Student Growth Percentiles and Projections
The SGP project provides a variety of data for analyzing student growth trends and projections. These data are available through a web application that is accessible to educators. These tools allow teachers and schools to identify students who need more support, and identify the specific steps necessary for those students to meet proficiency. These data are also used for reporting, teacher evaluation and to inform instructional decisions.
Student growth percentiles (SGP) compare a student’s progress with other students with similar prior test scores (their academic peers). SGPs are calculated by comparing a student’s test score progression over time with their academic peers across the country, using Betebenner’s catch-up and keep-up growth projections. SGPs are updated regularly to reflect the most recent data. The SGP data set consists of a student’s mSGP score, a median mSGP score and a range of mSGP scores for the student’s academic peers. The SGP data set is a valuable tool for teachers, schools and districts to track student growth over time, identify areas of concern and provide feedback on student progress.
For each student in the data set, the first column, ID, provides the unique student identifier. The following 5 columns, GRADE_2013, GRADE_2014, GRADE_2015, GRADE_2016 and GRADE_2017, provide the student’s grade level assessment scores for each year in their school career. For some students, the SGP data does not have all five years of test results so these values are marked as missing (NA).
The sgpData vignette contains more comprehensive documentation on how to use sgpData and WIDE data formats in general for SGP analyses. In particular, please refer to the SGP data analysis vignette for details on how to create a sgpData based on an INSTRUCTOR-STUDENT lookup file (sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER) and how to prepare this data for use with the lower level SGP functions, studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections.
Currently, the data sgp package supports both WIDE and LONG formatted sgpData files. For operational SGP analyses, we recommend utilizing the higher level wrapper functions, abcSGP and updateSGP, that utilize the LONG format of sgpData for greater processing efficiency.
The goal of the SGP project is to assemble or generate multi-proxy sedimentary geochemical data (iron, carbon, sulfur, major and trace metal abundances, and isotopes) for each Paleozoic Epoch and roughly equivalent Neoproterozoic time slice. Ultimately, the compiled data will be migrated to permanent data repositories. This will enable researchers to address new questions regarding Earth history and will help inform shale geochemical models.