Data sgp is an important piece of information for many different types of users, from teachers to administrators. This information enables them to determine if students grew more or less than their academic peers and is an essential part of the school improvement process. In addition, data sgp can help them identify trends in student growth and provide the context needed to understand those trends.
SGPs are a measure of student growth in relation to the performance of students with similar prior MCAS scores (their academic peers). They are calculated using up to two years of historical data. In order to calculate a student’s SGP, we use a statistical procedure known as quantile regression. This places a student’s growth score on a normative scale along with the scores of their academic peers, both within and across grades, demographic groups (e.g., race/ethnicity, income), and educational programs (e.g., sheltered English immersion, multilingual learning).
In the case of teachers, their mSGP scores are linked to their course roster submission data that is submitted to NJ SMART. These data are used for teacher evaluations. mSGPs are converted to a 1-4 score and tabulated with the teacher practice and SGO scores. The median student growth percentile conversion chart provides a conversion table for mSGPs to show how they translate from the 1-99 scale to the 1-4 scale.
While SGPs are useful for analyzing student growth, they must be interpreted carefully. Because they are based on normative data, SGPs will shift from year to year. However, this shifting is expected because of yearly changes in the averages statewide. Therefore, a difference in SGPs of fewer than 10 points between years should not be considered significant.
Another important consideration is that SGPs are compared to the student’s academic peers, and not against all students in their grade. This is an important distinction as it allows for the fair comparison of students who enter the classroom at different levels, including those who have varying prior MCAS score histories.
The data set sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER is an anonymized, student-instructor lookup table that provides insturctor information associated with each test record. This information is used to calculate student sgps for each content area. It is also used by higher level analyses that require more detailed data. These analyses are available to teachers and administrators in the SGP Query Builder. Lastly, this information is required to generate sgp reports for individual students in the SGP Report Builder. This tool allows teachers to generate SGP reports that compare the progress of students in one or more content areas over multiple years and in different contexts. In this way, the SGP Report Builder is an invaluable tool for identifying patterns in student performance. This is especially useful for identifying student strengths and weaknesses and making targeted instructional decisions. In addition, it is an effective way to communicate growth to parents and stakeholders. The data sgp is a valuable resource that will continue to evolve as we gain more insight into the ways in which teachers are preparing students for success in the future.