The data sgp tool is an open-source package for calculating student growth percentiles (SGP) and projections/trajectories from large scale, longitudinal education assessment data. It can take a variety of different types of data, including scores from standardized tests, student portfolios, and grading scales. The program can also be used to evaluate educational policies and practices.

SGPs are based on the average of several latent achievement attributes that are estimated from a student’s assessment history. These attributes describe a student’s level of ability in a given subject-matter area. A student’s true level of ability, however, is determined by a combination of many factors, which may include a family’s income, their level of education and experience with learning, and their current state of mental health. These variables are difficult to quantify and estimate. As such, they are not directly comparable to test score-based measures of performance such as VAMs.

In general, the higher the SGP, the more likely the student is to be at or above his/her expected performance. In addition, a lower SGP will indicate that the student is making less progress than would be expected. Educators can use this information to make informed decisions about how best to support each student.

The SGPdata database provides a set of anonymized student-teacher lookup tables that associate teacher IDs with each of the students in the dataset. The data is provided in both WIDE and LONG format. We strongly recommend that you use the LONG format for all SGP analyses, as it simplifies preparation and storage of the analyses year after year and the higher level SGP functions all assume it.

To create an SGP, we need a data set that includes a student’s assessment record for multiple years in each content area. The sgptData_LONG data set contains this information. It is an anonymized panel data set that consists of assessment results in the long format from 8 windows (3 windows annually) in 3 content areas (Early Literacy, Math and Reading).

In SGP analyses, the first column, ID, provides the unique student identifier. The next five columns, GRADE_2013, GRADE_2014, GRADE_2015, and GRADE_2016 provide the grade level at which the student was assessed in each of these 5 years. The final five columns, SS_2013, SS_2014, SS_2015, SS_2016, and SS_2017, provide the student’s scale score for each of these assessments.

This data can be downloaded from the BAA Secure Site, and then copied/pasted into one of the interactive data tools created by Macomb and Clare-Gladwin ISDs. While we encourage districts to begin using these data tools now, it is our strong recommendation that they only use these data for learning about SGPs and not to implement high stakes educator evaluations until they are stabilized. The process for doing so can be challenging and it is important to understand the limitations of this new measure before applying it to your district. We have put together a number of resources that will help you get started.