Data SGP (Data Set Graphing Platform) is an open-source software package used for storing and managing student growth percentile (SGP) results. Users can perform analyses using SGPs at district, school and individual student levels – providing benefits such as data preparation/management/automated analysis as well as easy retrieval of analytical results. It was designed with operational use in mind – offering benefits like data preparation/management/automated analysis / retrieval features that facilitate daily operation.

Big data refers to datasets that are too large for traditional data management applications to manage effectively, like Facebook user web logs; but when compared with this kind of material used for student growth percentile research it can actually be quite small – hence we refer to it as medium data rather than “big data.”

SGPs are measures of student performance that compare a current assessment score with that of similar students from prior state exams in terms of academic year and grade level. By using this tool, educators can easily identify areas of student progress while also pinpointing those needing extra help – useful data that can then be applied towards educator evaluations, learning objectives (SLOs) and continuous improvement efforts.

Calculating SGPs requires having access to test scores in an appropriate format. The state provides this data via the sgpdata file; each test score associated with an unique student identifier and date/time stamp as well as test title, question number and response options for all items within each assessment test.

SGPs are calculated by grouping students in each year and grade level into deciles, and then calculating what percentile their scores fall within in relation to all students across their state population. For instance, if one scored 300 on an English language arts test this year, their SGP would fall in the 75th percentile as 75% of other test takers had lower scores than them, which indicates progress being made.

This information is then disseminated at the state, district and school/district/subgroup levels. For each group reported is its mean SGP; this represents the average of all of their mean SGPs for all students within that particular group.

The mean Student Growth Percentiles are determined from averaging all individual student growth percentiles within each school/district/subgroup and normalizing them to create a bell curve distribution with equal numbers of students in each decile.

The sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER data set is an anonymized student-instructor lookup table which provides instructors for each test record of every student in an evaluation year. Students may have more than one teacher associated with them during testing year; moreover, school changes during that year can significantly change which teachers they are assigned for that year of testing. Due to these considerations, most analyses should use LONG format of sgpdata rather than WIDE as higher level functions (i.e. wrappers for studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections) are designed with this in mind.