The data sgp tool provides educators with a powerful new way of seeing student performance. Educators and teams can use data SGP to identify areas of strength and focus improvement.
Unlike VAMs which look at individual teacher performance, data SGP analyzes the growth of students in groups (or cohorts) and shows how a group performs over time. These analyses help teachers understand their classroom context and how to best support students in their groups.
To do this, the tool uses longitudinal data from ACT tests that are administered every year to large samples of Wisconsin high school students. These samples are weighted to make them more representative of the student population who takes the ACT in terms of student demographics (race/ethnicity and gender), school poverty level, and school type (public or private).
The result is that a student’s test score history is compared with those of academically-similar students from across the state. This comparison yields a percentile rank for each student that indicates how much the student has grown relative to their academically-similar peers. Higher percentile ranks indicate that a student has made more progress than their academically-similar peers.
A typical SGP graph will have a bell-shape curve with equal numbers of students at each percentile point. This is a desirable characteristic and what one would expect to see given the underlying statistical model used to produce the SGP.
SGP analyses require a great deal of input. This is largely due to the fact that most of the lower level functions, such as studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections, require WIDE formatted data and the higher level functions (wrappers for the lower level ones) require LONG data. For these reasons, we recommend that users carefully prepare their data prior to running SGP analyses.
In addition, it is highly recommended that users run a series of data quality checks on their SGP files prior to running any analysis. This will help them catch errors and correct them before they cause any problems with the results of their analyses.
Finally, it should be noted that SGPs are not a measure of whether a student’s performance is adequate to meet their educational needs. They are merely an indication of how well a student has progressed, based on their previous test score histories. To determine if a student’s achievement level is adequate, stakeholders should review their individual Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) reports. This will give them a more complete picture of the student’s progress toward their academic goals. They should also consider the student’s background and current circumstances when evaluating their performance. This may include factors such as family and school support, health status, and social-emotional skills.