Data sgp is the term used to describe the collection of student assessment data that has been analyzed to produce growth percentiles and projections for students. This collection of data can be used by school administrators to better understand how students are performing, and the extent to which a student’s performance is related to his or her starting point. This information can also be used to determine which students are in need of additional support and resources, and which ones may already be close to proficiency.
Percentile rankings are calculated anew each year, so differences in SGPs between years need to be interpreted with caution. Differences of fewer than 10 points should not be considered significant.
For example, if Simon has a growth percentile of 63, this means that he has made more progress in academic skills than 63 percent of his or her peers with similar starting points. This does not necessarily mean that Simon has improved his or her performance significantly from one year to the next, however, as changes in the SGP are driven by a number of factors including overall trends in statewide results, the timing of the assessments, and the impact of events such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
SGPs provide a relative ranking of how far a student has progressed in their academic skills, but they also reflect the average growth for all students in the state in a particular year. Thus, any interpretation of average SGPs must take into account the range of experiences students have had since the end of 8th grade through 9th grade and most of 10th grade.
In the Star Growth Report, authorized users can drill down to student detail that provides multiple additional data points for each individual student. These include: the student’s unique identifier; each assessment year, including the date that the assessment was taken and the grade level that the test was administered at; the growth interval (e.g., sixth to seventh grade); the student’s growth percentile and corresponding growth level (high, low, typical); scale score data and performance levels; and attendance rate in the growth year.
The sgptData_LONG data set contains the same data as the sgpData data set but in the LONG format, which is required for higher-level SGP functions such as prepareSGP and analyzeSGP. These functions perform aggregations to produce student groups on the basis of a combination of demographic and academic groupings. These groups are represented by bubbles on the SGP graph; hovering over a bubble displays the total number of students in that group, the mean SGP for that group, and the percentage of that group that is proficient or advanced.