The data sgp tool provides a variety of information about student growth and academic progress. These statistics are reported in terms of relative performance in relation to a group, known as a “student growth cohort” or SGC. Students who are similar to or perform better than their SGC have shown growth above the state average, while those who have performed worse than their SGC are below it.
The SGP model uses up to two years of historical MCAS assessment data. This data is stored in WIDE format with each row representing a single case/student and the columns representing various variables associated with the student at different times (the sgpData_WIDE and sgpData_LONG datasets, installed by the SGPdata package, provide an exemplar panel data set that models this format). SGP analyses use lower level functions (studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections) and the higher level function sgpSGP_Metadata (which wraps these lower level functions) require sgpData meta-data to function.
Data sgp is intended to be used alongside scaled scores and achievement levels for a complete picture of a student’s academic progress. A student’s SGP indicates whether their growth is similar, more than, or less than their academic peers in the same grade; this is called a percentile rank. In addition, a student’s SGP can provide insight into why their results varied from one year to the next.
SGPs can be averaged to report the typical growth for schools, districts, or student subgroups. These averages can be viewed on the MCAS Results by Student Group page of School and District Profiles and are used to populate the state-level student growth percentile graphs.
When analyzing average student growth percentages it is important to remember that these represent the aggregated results of all students in a given grade, including those with no previous test score history. Additionally, students who have high raw scores on prior test sections will often find that their SGP is comparable to those of the top 1% of all students on the current assessment. This is a natural result of the relative nature of SGP calculations.
Teachers and administrators can utilize SGPs to determine whether their students are growing at a pace that is similar to or greater than the growth of their academic peers, as well as to identify potential areas for improvement in their instruction. To do so, teachers must first select their course codes from the mSGP Course Code List, found on the Documents for Download section of the Resources and Training webpage. Courses selected for mSGP ratings must be English language arts or mathematics grades that have been administered in the past and have valid test scores in both the spring of 2023-2024 and the fall of 2024-2023. Additionally, courses selected must be taught by teachers that have been in the class for at least 60% of the course before the first day of the MCAS assessment. This is necessary to ensure that a teacher’s SGP represents only the average growth for all of his or her students in a course.