The Importance of Student Growth Percentiles (SGP)The Importance of Student Growth Percentiles (SGP)
Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) are relative measures of student performance that compare a student’s raw scores on past tests with similar students within his/her age and subject group. This metric helps determine whether students are making sufficient improvements over time – the higher their score is, the better their achievement is; but simply maintaining similar raw scores may not indicate growth as students can experience wide variance in performance when new to a school or subject area.
SGP analyses require careful preparation of data sets before running them, which is especially true of operational analyses where studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections may be combined, often with one or more years’ data. To assist users, the SGP package offers tutorials and examples that illustrate fundamental SGP methodology as well as WIDE format data and LONG format data for use when conducting SGP analyses.
Accurate and timely information about student outcomes is vitally important to education researchers. Such data is required for understanding trends, recognizing patterns of success, planning ahead and helping educators evaluate programs’ efficacy; ultimately enabling them to make decisions that enhance children’s lives – this being especially critical given budget restrictions and increased scrutiny on public educational institutions.
Not only do we distribute data directly to educators, we also collaborate with state and local educational agencies in providing tools that allow them to easily and quickly access standardized test and other student outcome data that enables them to better support students and schools, as well as meet state requirements for reporting academic achievement to the public.
DSST Data Sharing Initiative, a national effort, offers states an efficient and standardized method for sharing student outcome data between states. Schools and districts use this system to share test and non-test student outcome data among themselves and school leaders. As part of this project, participants have learned to collaborate through shared vocabulary and processes for describing data as well as creating principles to ensure accurate and useful sharing of information.
We are still exploring how best to meet the needs of our users at this early stage, so any comments and suggestions regarding ways we can enhance our service would be welcomed! Please visit our website or email us directly with your thoughts – we look forward to collaborating with you!