Student Growth Percentile (SGP) measures a student’s growth in academic skills over time compared to their academic peers. It indicates how much the student grew similar to, more than, or less than their academic peers and is meant to be considered along with scaled scores and achievement levels to gain a more complete picture of students’ learning.
SGP is calculated using a statistical method called quantile regression that compares the student’s current score to their previous scores on state assessments. SGPs are reported on a 1-99 scale, higher numbers indicate greater relative growth and lower numbers indicate less relative growth. Because SGPs are based on comparisons to an academic peer group, two students with very different scale scores can have the same SGP number.
To interpret a student’s SGP, teachers and administrators use the Student Growth Percentile Tables in the SGP Reporting Guide for Administrators or one of the SGP Reporting Guides for Educators, which also provide vignettes to assist with interpretation. For example, Student A scored a low scale score on this year’s MCAS test in a subject area but was assigned a high SGP of 90, meaning that she grew more than 90% of her academic peers. Student B scored a high scale score on this year’s MCAS in the same subject area but was assigned a low SGP of 50, meaning that she only grew as much as 50% of her academic peers.
Teachers’ mSGPs are determined by NJDOE via linkage of district course roster submission data with relevant SGP scores for each qualifying teacher. This information is then provided to teachers to use as part of their teacher evaluations, but many districts and teachers also utilize mSGPs for professional development planning purposes.
In addition to the mSGP tables, SGP reports also include information on student and class-level growth over time, as well as a report of how many students in each class have achieved their SGP. These reports are available through the mSGP Reporting Web Interface.
The SGPdata package contains 4 examplar data sets for use with SGP analyses. The first, sgpData, specifies data in the WIDE format used by the lower level SGP functions studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. The other two data sets, sgptData_LONG and sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER, specify data in the LONG format used by the higher level SGP wrapper functions abcSGP, prepareSGP, and analyzeSGP.
These tools can be used to support a variety of data-driven decisions made by educators and administrators, including assessing student learning, determining a student’s next steps in instruction, and making data-based decision on funding allocations. For more details, please see the technical resources on the SGP School and District Resources webpage.