The goal of data sgp is to provide access to SGP data for teachers and administrators. This is done by creating a database where SGP scores and associated metadata are stored. Using this database, students can be compared to their academic peers to determine whether or not they grew more than, less than, or about the same as their peers. Teachers and administrators can also use the information to compare student growth to their expectations and plan accordingly.
To do this, we create the SGP data set sgptData_LONG that contains the 7 required variables for SGP analyses: VALID_CASE, CONTENT_AREA, YEAR, ID, SCALE_SCORE, GRADE and ACHIEVEMENT_LEVEL (required only if running student growth projections). The sgptData_LONG data sets also contain demographic/student categorization variables for creating aggregates that can be used by higher level functions such as studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections.
Once the sgptData_LONG is complete, we load it into our SGP package database and prepare it for the SGP analyses that will be conducted. This is done with the SGP function prepareSGP, which creates the exemplar data set sgpData_LONG, and the INSTRUCTOR-STUDENT lookup file, sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER. The exemplar data set models the format for data that is used with the lower level studentGrowthPercentiles and
studentGrowthProjections functions. This includes a set of indices and corresponding confidence intervals that are used to construct the SGP percentiles. Lastly, the prepareSGP function also constructs a summary report containing the SGP percentiles and confidence intervals for each of the students in the school/district.
The next step is to execute the SGP analyses with the SGP function studentGrowthPercentiles and the SGP function studentGrowthProjections. The result of the analysis is an aggregation of student growth for each student in the school/district. This SGP aggregation can then be compared to the expected SGP percentiles for each student and the expected student achievement levels.
If the SGP percentiles for a given student are below the expected level, the teacher should plan on increasing their expectations for that student. Conversely, if the SGP percentiles for a student are above the expected level, the teacher should plan to lower their expectations for that student. This process is repeated across all aggregations for each student in the school/district. As the number of aggregations increases, the SGP percentages will continue to trend toward the expected values. Eventually, the SGP percentages will approach the actual student performance levels. This is a measure of the accuracy of the SGP calculations. The more accurate the SGP calculations, the more useful the information will be for teachers and administrators to make informed decisions regarding student instruction and assessment.
