The data sgp package provides a set of functions for analyzing student growth percentiles. Student growth percentiles provide a means for students to be compared against their peers. This type of information is very useful for teachers and administrators because it can help them see how their students are progressing and identify areas that need improvement.

The sgpData data set is an anonymized, panel data set comprised of 5 years of annual, vertically scaled, assessment data. This exemplar data set models the format for data used with the lower level studentGrowthPercentiles and studentGrowthProjections functions.

sgpData contains student assessments for grades 1 to 12 that are collected by the state of Georgia over a five year period. The first column of sgpData, ID, provides a unique student identifier. The next 5 columns, GRADE_2013, GRADE_2014, GRADE_2015, and GRADE_2016 provide the student’s assessment occurrences in each of these years. The final 5 columns, SS_2013, SS_2014, SS_2015, and SS_2016, provide the student’s scaled score associated with each of these assessment occurrences.

In addition to the student data, the sgpData data set includes an anonymized, teacher-student lookup table sgpData_INSTRUCTOR_NUMBER that provides the instructor number for each of the student’s test records. This is necessary because a student can (and often does) have multiple teachers associated with their test record in each of the content areas.

Data SGP is a collection of reusable tools that make it easy for educators to use student assessment data to inform educational decisions. The Data SGP tools allow users to easily transform and manipulate student data from different sources, analyze that data, and create reports based on the results of their analyses. Data SGP also includes tools for creating, managing and publishing student growth percentiles.

The Data SGP website provides links to several additional resources for using student assessment data in educational decision making. These additional resources include training materials, demonstrations, and example code for implementing Data SGP tools.

Located on 160 acres of cattle pasture and wheat fields southeast of Lamont, the SGP site is home to the highly instrumented Central Facility where technicians and support staff continuously monitor data from a range of instruments. Research scientists supplement the continuous observations at the Central Facility with field research campaigns and guest instruments at remote sites throughout the network. The data collected at the SGP site is available for a wide range of uses from single observation analyses, to multi-observation process studies, and assimilation into earth system models. The Data SGP website is an invaluable resource for a wide array of atmospheric and earth system scientists. The data is available for free on the web, and users can access the data in a variety of formats. The tools and resources provided by the Data SGP site are essential to support the development of educational and research activities in the area of atmospheric science. Moreover, they will continue to be invaluable as the science community moves forward with a comprehensive understanding of global climate change.