Data SGP gives educators a nuanced view of student performance by comparing an assessment score with academically similar students, providing educators with insight into both how much a student has improved as well as their overall progress; this can inform instructional practices, classroom research initiatives and school/district evaluation processes; however it must be remembered that SGP doesn’t take account for contextual factors like socio-economic status or environmental influences that may hinder performance.
This article will offer an introduction to the SGP system and its significance in education, including its various growth percentiles and their usage. Furthermore, we’ll discuss its limitations as well as ways it may best be combined with other tools like formative assessments or classroom observations to promote an equitable and effective educational system.
As opposed to other assessment metrics, Student Growth Percentile (SGP) measures student progress relative to their peers on a percentile scale, making interpretation easier for educators while giving a more accurate depiction of student development than standard averages or mean scores.
SGP uses a cohort model, wherein students are compared with academically similar peers with similar test score histories and then ranked according to current performance and percentile rank. For example, if one achieves a score of 300 on this year’s statewide English Language Arts test (ELA), their SGP would indicate they performed better than 75% of peers who also achieved scores below 300 on previous ELA statewide tests.
SGP depends on consistent and reliable longitudinal data to produce accurate results, so any inconsistency or missing pieces could impact its accuracy, making it more challenging to accurately assess student progress. Furthermore, external influences like socio-economic status can alter performance levels significantly which could produce inaccurate or misleading outcomes for these programs.
The BAA Secure Site’s “sgpData” tab houses an SGP report for each student (4th through 11th grades), along with an anonymized list that displays each teacher associated with each test record. To access this information, select one of your students in sgpData tab and click “sgpData”.
As part of its analysis, it’s crucial that SGP results produced for students reflect the bell-shaped distribution seen across states; that is, average or median scores will usually have fewer students than maximum or minimum scores at any particular percentile because most students lie nearer the middle of this distribution and a larger sample would be required to change this average or median upward or downward in its distribution. To combat this problem, the sgpData tab generates control statements to convert E-SGP records to X-RGP records before deleting them from its database and database altogether.