A student growth percentile is a percentile ranking from 1 to 99 which explains a student’s academic progress compared to his/her academic peers.

Median student growth percentiles (mSGPs) are a way to measure growth for groups of students, such as schools, grade levels, programs, and classes. To calculate an mSGP, the student growth percentiles for all students in the group are ordered from smallest to largest, and the mSGP is the percentile in the middle of that list. This means that half of the students in the group would have an SGP above the mSGP, and half of the students in the group have an SGP lower than the mSGP.

In the state ESSA plan, mSGP is the measure of academic progress. The school (ESSA) and district (QSAC) accountability models use mSGP, measured both for all students and by student group, as one of the indicators used to identify schools that need the most support.

New Jersey also committed to developing measures of student growth as required under the TEACHNJ Act. Qualifying educators may have the mSGP of their students used as one element of their evaluation. Visit the NJDOE AchieveNJ webpage for more information.

• Student Growth Percentile video
• Understanding Student Growth Percentiles
• An Overview of Student Growth Percentiles (August 2011 six-page overview from the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessments (NCIEA))
• Technical Overview of the Student Growth Percentile Methodology (technical paper providing a detailed explanation of the statistical methodology used to calculate student growth percentiles)