As part of their educational experience, students strive to meet state standards. One measure for evaluating their success is whether or not they are making adequate strides towards that goal; SGP measures how much growth has occurred on an MCAS assessment – it uses a statistical model comparing scores with existing courses or subjects to compute growth from 1 – 99; an SGP score between 85 and 99 indicates more growth than 85 percent of academic peers – this indicator can show progress even with low scores on state exams, while students with higher scores might show less progress.
MCAS reports and School and District Profiles present each student’s Student Growth Percentiles results on MCAS reports, School and District Profiles website, or MCAS Reports by Student Group of School and District Profiles site. SGP results for an entire school (or grade level) or district are combined and averaged together to analyze progress made over time by its students; additionally they are reported by demographic groupings such as race/ethnicity, income status, special education needs or multilingual education on MCAS Reports by Student Group page of School and District Profiles site.
Utilizing SGP information, states can identify areas where additional work needs to be done for all students. For instance, if a particular student isn’t making enough progress in math instruction and has been identified as needing additional support from state officials. As an additional solution for them to catch up, more resources could be allocated toward math instruction for that student.
SGP data can also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of specific teachers or programs. For instance, teachers might need to improve how they present information to their students so that they understand more easily what is expected of them – this data can then help determine what changes need to be made to enhance teaching practices.
Remember, SGPs are calculated differently every year; thus any comparisons from one year to the next should be undertaken with care and only differences of 10 points or greater are regarded as meaningful.
To gain more insight into interpreting SGP data, refer to one of our MCAS Growth webpage stakeholder guides. These guides for administrators, educators and families detail how to access and interpret different kinds of growth reports that DESE offers as well as questions for reviewing growth data and prompts for using these reports in instructional planning. These guidelines are available both in English and Spanish versions; English editions come complete with an audio track while the Spanish ones don’t.