Student Growth Percentiles, or SGPs, measure the rate at which students improve on state assessments. By comparing scores on recent and earlier tests to each other and showing growth relative to similar students (i.e. academic peers), we can more fairly evaluate a student’s performance even when they don’t meet state standards.
The Data SGP Package allows educators to analyze growth reports at the school, district and statewide levels. It can help educators identify instructional practices that contribute to students’ learning while monitoring student progress over time and can also be incorporated into a continuous improvement cycle to assist educators with reflecting upon and refining their practices.
To begin, educators need to register an account at data sgp and create a panel of students who have taken at least two testing windows – typically, teachers may look back two years for comparison, with this data then used to calculate their mSGP scores.
mSGPs are calculated using the median of a teacher’s student growth percentile scores from their panel. This percentage reflects their academic peers – all other students within their grade and assessment subject who have similar MCAS test score histories; peers do not differ due to race/ethnicity, special education needs or multilingual learning capabilities.
Because SGPs are relative, students with extremely high raw scores in any one testing window may receive an SGP score of 99; this does not imply they are not making progress – rather, the model was created to assess growth for all students including those at the top.
Though the mSGP can provide invaluable insight into student growth, its results may not always reflect those found at other schools due to differences in population size and composition, student learning objectives for tests administered during each year or how growth is measured.
To ensure maximum effectiveness of mSGPs, districts should provide their administrators and educators with training on how to interpret and understand results of SGPs. This should include outlining key components of an mSGP report as well as prompts for incorporating it into instructional practices. For more information, visit the MCAS Growth Web page; OSPI also offers three stakeholder-specific guides for understanding SGPs: