The term big data refers to a massive amount of information that is often hard to manage and analyze. This is a challenge faced by businesses of all sizes and industries. Fortunately, there are several tools available to help you organize and understand your data. These tools can be used to make informed decisions and improve business performance. They can also be used to make more accurate predictions about future events.
SGP is an analysis tool for longitudinal student assessment data that creates statistical growth plots (SGPs). These provide visual evidence of students’ academic progress relative to their academic peers. SGPs are created using students’ standardized test scores along with covariate data and a growth standard that is established through prior testing history. This provides more accurate measurements of student growth than traditional percentile scores.
An important benefit of SGPs is that they allow educators to identify struggling students more quickly than simple mean, median or mode scores. This can help educators differentiate instruction for those who need it most and provide supplemental support to students in failing schools. Educators can also use SGPs to monitor the progress of high achieving students and differentiate their learning needs.
Moreover, SGPs can be used to assess accelerated programs and to determine if the students are making sufficient gains to reach their achievement targets within a specified timeframe. SGPs can also be used to communicate to stakeholders that proficiency must be reached within a specified time frame and serve as a powerful motivating factor for teachers by linking their performance to measurable goals.
To utilize the SGP tool, users will need access to a WIDE or LONG format data set and a computer capable of running the SGP functions. The SGPdata package provides an example WIDE data set sgptData_LONG that simulates time dependent data and can be used with lower level SGP functions like studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections. Additionally, the SGPdata package provides a LONG format data set sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER that contains teacher lookup information associated with each student test record.
Once the SGPtool is properly configured and a data set has been loaded, the analyses that it performs are designed to be as straightforward as possible. Most of the errors that come up in SGP analyses revert back to problems with data preparation, and so most of our assistance with SGP analyses involves helping users work through these initial steps.