Student Growth Percentiles (SGP) communicate the amount of progress a student has made in a subject area based on the scores they have received on previous Star assessments. Students are grouped with academic peers who have similar score patterns in the past and given percentile ranks based on those groups.
The model that is used to calculate SGPs takes up to two years of test data into account when assessing students. The SGP scale ranges from 0-99 and a high score indicates that the student has more relative progress than their peers.
SGPs are not intended to replace the need for teachers and districts to continue to analyze performance, but rather complement it. They are a tool to help identify the progress a student has made as well as what they need to do to reach proficiency.
As such, teachers should always look at their SGPs and see how they are doing as well as the overall progress of their students in a subject area. This will allow them to make informed decisions on what needs to be done for their students and determine if the student is on track to meet their growth goal.
Using SGPs should be a part of the planning process for all educators. Educators can utilize the information in SGPs to provide feedback to students and parents on their progress and determine if students are making adequate progress toward meeting state standards. Teachers can also use their mSGPs to inform their teacher practice score and Student Growth Objectives (SGO) when completing their evaluations.
To determine a students SGP, the MCAS assessment results are compared to the performance of academic peers who have similar score patterns on previous assessments in the same subject. Academic peer groups are based on a number of factors including demographics, grade level, educational program (e.g. sheltered English immersion, special education), and prior MCAS scores.
A statistical technique called quantile regression is then used to place the student’s current score on a normative scale which identifies their percentile rank. The SGPs are calculated statewide, and can be reported for schools, districts, and subgroups within a school or district.
The SGP calculation uses up to two years of MCAS test history to produce a student’s mSGP score. mSGPs are then translated to a 1-4 scale that is used for teacher evaluations. In Fall 2024, a teacher’s mSGP will be based on the median of their two most recent mSGPs.
SGPs can be viewed in Star by selecting a specific window or current mSGP from the “Timeframe” dropdown menu. Window Specific SGPs and Current mSGPs are the only SGP options available at this time that are not already provided in the SGO tool.
The SGPdata package was designed to simplify the tasks of preparing and conducting SGP analyses. As a result, most SGP analyses that we assist on rely upon a simple two step process: 1) data preparation and 2) running SGP calculations. Almost all errors that come up while working with the SGPdata package revert back to data preparation issues so it is important to take the necessary steps when preparing and running an analysis with this tool.