What is Data SGP?

Data sgp is a package that provides classes, functions and data for calculating student growth percentiles and percentile growth projections/trajectories using large scale, longitudinal education assessment data. Percentile growth scores describe the amount of student learning that a student demonstrated relative to peers with similar score histories on the subject-matter test. They can range from 1-99 and are interpreted similarly to percentile ranks where higher numbers indicate greater growth.

In addition to student growth percentiles, the SGP package provides methods for comparing students across states and years of schooling. This allows educators to set achievement targets/goals and then monitor student progress towards these goals. It also serves as an effective means for conveying to stakeholders the timeframe in which proficiency must be reached, a crucial message when seeking support from local and state leadership.

SGP analyses are straightforward once proper data preparation has been completed. In fact, almost all errors that arise when running SGP analyses usually revert back to problems with the data preparation step. Whether the SGP package lower level functions, studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections or higher level wrapper functions are used, it is highly recommended that analyses be run on data formatted in the LONG format as the vast majority of the higher level functions are designed for this format and provide many management benefits over the WIDE format.

Unlike the popular ‘big data’ paradigm in which big is synonymous with complex and data-intensive, SGP research is relatively modest in scale. The amount of data involved is considerable, and it certainly requires substantial computing resources, but in terms of ‘big data’ it is still small potatoes. In addition, the SGP database is very manageable and easy to maintain compared to other similar databases in the educational measurement world.

Moreover, the SGP database is free and open source, which makes it a valuable resource for researchers in all disciplines who would like to access high quality education performance data. Currently, the SGP database contains more than a million datapoints for students in grades K-12 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The data is continuously updated as new assessments are released. This provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of various policies and programs on student outcomes. Moreover, the SGP database is also useful for developing and testing statistical models to predict student learning. This data will also help policy makers develop better, more informed education policies. Lastly, the SGP database will serve as a powerful tool for educators to compare student performance across districts and states. This will assist them in identifying best practices and highlighting areas of concern. This will ultimately lead to more effective, data-driven decisions by the federal and state levels of government and improve student learning in our nation’s schools.