SGP measures relative student academic growth compared to the student’s peers. It is an important measure for teachers and administrators because it tells them if their students grew more than, less than, or as much as the average student in their classroom. It also helps them see if students grew more or less than expected, and can help determine if students are progressing or stagnating in their learning. SGP is measured on a scale of 1-99, with higher numbers indicating greater relative growth.
To use the SGP package, you will need a computer with the R software environment installed. R is open source and free to download for Windows, OSX, or Linux. It is recommended that you spend some time familiarizing yourself with the R environment before running any SGP analyses.
The SGP data package contains longitudinal (time dependent) student assessment information in WIDE format, where each case/row represents one student and columns represent variables associated with that student at different points in time. The SGP package also contains a LONG format version of the same data, which can be used with more sophisticated SGP analyses and offers many preparation and storage advantages over WIDE formats.
Both formats are available for download from the SGP website, and both can be used with the SGP analysis functions. The lower level SGP analysis functions (studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections) use the WIDE data format, while the more advanced SGP analyses (currentSGP, growthMeasure, and SGPProfiler) use the LONG data format.
To create a complete SGP profile for each student, you will need to provide us with a list of assessments that the student has taken over their lifetime. For each assessment, we will need to know the date of the assessment, the subject area of the test, and the scale score for the test. In addition, you will need to provide a list of the teacher responsible for administering each assessment. We will use this information to calculate current SGP and to determine a growth target for each student. This information will then be available to educators and parents through the SGP web interface. To find out more about SGP and how it can be used in the classroom, click here.