Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) measure how much more an individual student has accomplished compared to his or her academic peers. SGPs are determined by comparing current MCAS scores to past scores using up to two years’ data and the statistical method quantile regression. Academic peers include any students from within one grade who share similar MCAS histories; this could include gender, race/ethnicity or educational program (such as sheltered English immersion, special education).
SGPs are available for students enrolled in grades 4th to 11th, with reports available by district, school and classroom. In Washington State schools and districts use SGPs to assess their effectiveness, plan improvements and identify student needs. OSPI does not mandate distribution of SGP results to families or teachers – although those that choose to distribute these reports can access additional training resources on OSPI’s Student Growth District and School Resources webpage.
Educators frequently inquire about using SGPs for high stakes purposes such as educator evaluations. At this time, it is strongly advised that districts invest their efforts in learning about and preparing to use SGPs before using them for high-stakes purposes in 2015/16. Doing this will enable both the State and districts to ensure SGPs remain stable before employing them in such capacities.
The Data SGP package offers four sample data sets to explore the possibilities of SGP analyses. One, known as sgpData, corresponds to WIDE format used by studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections functions; three more specify LONG formats used by higher level functions like abcSGP and prepareSGP.
The sgpData packages provide several ways of visualizing individual student growth projections (SGPs). These include bubble graphs where each bubble represents one student group and interactive charts where users can move their cursor over individual bubbles to display the mean SGPs and percentage of students who were proficient or advanced within each student group.
Finally, the sgpData packages include a macro driven MS Excel document which will take your district student data file from the BAA Secure Site and plot both achievement and growth of each student in your cohort. It’s an effective way of getting acquainted with this process without downloading all student records from BAA directly.