Utility function to produce a variety of graphical displays associated with student growth percentile/percentile growth trajectory results. Function currently includes facility to produce individual student growth and achievement plots, interactive bubble plots depicting summary growth and achievement data, and growth and achievement charts showing system level growth and achievement data as shown on the cover of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice as part of Betebenner (2009) and Betebenner (2012).
visualizeSGP(
sgp_object,
plot.types=c("bubblePlot", "studentGrowthPlot", "growthAchievementPlot"),
state,
bPlot.years=NULL,
bPlot.content_areas=NULL,
bPlot.districts=NULL,
bPlot.schools=NULL,
bPlot.instructors=NULL,
bPlot.styles=c(1),
bPlot.levels=NULL,
bPlot.level.cuts=NULL,
bPlot.full.academic.year=TRUE,
bPlot.minimum.n=10,
bPlot.anonymize=FALSE,
bPlot.prior.achievement=TRUE,
bPlot.draft=FALSE,
bPlot.demo=FALSE,
bPlot.output="PDF",
bPlot.format="print",
bPlot.folder="Visualizations/bubblePlots",
sgPlot.save.sgPlot.data=FALSE,
sgPlot.years=NULL,
sgPlot.content_areas=NULL,
sgPlot.districts=NULL,
sgPlot.schools=NULL,
sgPlot.reports.by.school=TRUE,
sgPlot.instructors=NULL,
sgPlot.reports.by.instructor=FALSE,
sgPlot.students=NULL,
sgPlot.reports.by.student=FALSE,
sgPlot.reports.group.vars=
list(DISTRICT_NUMBER="DISTRICT_NUMBER", SCHOOL_NUMBER="SCHOOL_NUMBER"),
sgPlot.header.footer.color="#4CB9CC",
sgPlot.front.page=NULL,
sgPlot.folder="Visualizations/studentGrowthPlots",
sgPlot.folder.names="number",
sgPlot.fan=TRUE,
sgPlot.custom.trajectory=FALSE,
sgPlot.sgp.targets=FALSE,
sgPlot.sgp.targets.timeframe=3,
sgPlot.anonymize=FALSE,
sgPlot.cleanup=TRUE,
sgPlot.demo.report=FALSE,
sgPlot.produce.plots=TRUE,
sgPlot.baseline=NULL,
sgPlot.zip=TRUE,
sgPlot.output.format="PDF",
sgPlot.year.span=5,
sgPlot.plot.test.transition=TRUE,
gaPlot.years=NULL,
gaPlot.content_areas=NULL,
gaPlot.students=NULL,
gaPlot.format="print",
gaPlot.baseline=NULL,
gaPlot.max.order.for.progression=NULL,
gaPlot.start.points="Achievement Level Cuts",
gaPlot.back.extrapolated.cuts=NULL,
gaPlot.SGPt=NULL,
gaPlot.folder="Visualizations/growthAchievementPlots",
parallel.config=NULL)Function produces numerous (potentially hundreds of thousands) of pdf files in a folder structure specified by the user and supplied through arguments to the function.
An object of class SGP containing long formatted data in the @Data slot that will be used for the production of student growth
and achievement plots and system growth and achievement plots, summary data from summarizeSGP in the Summary slot for bubble plots. Alternatively, a properly formatted WIDE data set can be provided for production of student growth plots. Such data sets are produced from an SGP object when the sgPlot.save.sgPlot.data argument is set to TRUE.
A character vector indicating what types of plots to construct. Currently available plots include bubblePlot,
studentGrowthPlot, and growthAchievementPlot.
Acronym indicating state associated with the summaries for access to assessment program information embedded in SGPstateData.
A vector indicating year(s) in which to produce bubblePlots using data available in sgp_object. If missing the
function will use the last year available in the data to produce bubblePlots.
A vector indicating content area(s) to produce bubblePlots using data available in sgp_object. If missing the
function will produce plots for all available content areas provided in the data.
A vector indicating districts to produce bubblePlots using data available in sgp_object. Consult bubblePlot
styles to determine which bubblePlots styles accept specification for districts. Default is to produce plots for all available districts in the data.
A vector indicating schools to produce bubblePlots using data available in sgp_object. Consult bubblePlot
styles to determine which bubblePlot styles accept specification for schools. Default is to produce plots for all available schools in the data.
A vector indicating instructors to produce bubblePlots using data available in sgp_object. If missing the
function will produce plots for all available instructors provided in the data where schools and districts represent relevant units to be represented by the specific bubblePlot style.
A vector of positive integers indicating the types of bubblePlots to produce using data available in sgp_object.
See associated documentation for example plots.
A character vector of levels to be used to color bubbles in the bubblePlot. See associated documentation for example plots.
A vector of cuts to be used to distinguish levels used to color bubbles in the bubblePlot. See associated
documentation for example plots.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether bubblePlots should use full academic year results if available.
A positive integer (defaults to 10) indicating the minimum size for summary values to be displayed in the bubblePlots.
A Boolean argument (defaults to FALSE) indicating whether to anonymize bubblePlots school and district names that appear in the
plots and data tips of the plots. For student level anonymization, the function utilizes the randomNames package to produce gender and ethnic correct names based
upon gender and ethnicity codes available in sgp_object@Data.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to produce bubblePlots using prior achievement as well as current
achievement as the vertical dimension of the bubblePlot.
A Boolean argument (defaults to FALSE) indicating whether to put an indicator on the chart noting that the results are draft and to not distribute.
A Boolean argument (defaults to FALSE) indicating whether to produce demo student level plots (styles 150 and/or 153) for instructors.
Argument indicating the desired type of output format for bubble plots. Either 'PDF' (default) or 'PNG'.
Either "print" or "presentation" indicating whether to optimize the plot for print form (light background) or presentation form (dark background).
Character vector indicating where bubblePlots should be placed. Default folder is "Visualizations/bubblePlots".
A Boolean argument indicating whether wide formatted data should be save as part of individual student report production. For operational student report production construction, using a wide formatted file for a large state can save in having to reshape the same long file multiple times.
A vector indicating year for which to produce studentGrowthPlots. The supplied year indicates the final year associated with each
student's studentGrowthPlot. If missing the function will use the last year available in the data to produce studentGrowthPlots.
A vector indicating the content areas for which to produce studentGrowthPlots. If missing, the function will utilize all available
content areas.
A vector indicating which districts to produce studentGrowthPlots for. If missing the function will use all available
districts in the data to produce studentGrowthPlots.
A vector indicating which schools to produce studentGrowthPlots for. If missing the function will use all available
schools in the data to produce studentGrowthPlots. If both sgPlot.districts and sgPlot.schools are provided the function produces
studentGrowthPlots for ALL students in the districts and schools provided.
A Boolean variable indicating whether the reports should be collated as single reports in a single folder by school and deposited into a
district/school/grade folder hierarchy. The default is TRUE which puts the reports into their appropriate district/school/grade folder.
A vector indicating which instructors to produce studentGrowthPlots for. If NULL and the argument sgPlot.reports.by.instructor is TRUE,
the argument function will use all available instructors in the data to produce studentGrowthPlots. If sgPlot.districts and/or sgPlot.schools are
provided the function produces studentGrowthPlots for ALL students in the districts and/or schools provided.
A Boolean variable indicating whether the reports should be collated as single reports in a single folder by school and deposited into a
district/school/grade folder hierarchy. The default is TRUE which puts the reports into their appropriate district/school/grade folder.
A vector of student IDs indicating which students to produce studentGrowthPlots for. If missing the function will
use all available students in the data to produce studentGrowthPlots.
A list of variables used to group student reports. Default is list(DISTRICT_NUMBER='DISTRICT_NUMBER', SCHOOL_NUMBER='SCHOOL_NUMBER')
A Boolean variable indicating whether the reports should be collated as single reports in a single folder or deposited into a
district/school/grade folder hierarchy. The default is FALSE which puts the reports into their appropriate district/school/grade slot.
Character vector (default is blue) indicating the color of the header/footer associated with the
studentGrowthPlot. Another good color is goldenrod2.
A path to a PDF to be used as the front page to the studentGrowthPlot. The default is missing so that no front page is
attached to the studentGrowthPlot.
Character vector indicating where studentGrowthPlots should be placed. Note that studentGrowthPlots are placed
within nested folders within this folder. Default folder is "Visualizations/studentGrowthPlots".
Either "name" or "number" (the default) indicating how the nested folder structure will be labeled that holds the
studentGrowthPlots.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to produce projection fan on studentGrowthPlots.
A Boolean argument (defaults to FALSE) or a character vector indicating the variable name containing the custom trajectory coordinates to be plotted.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to indicate SGP growth targets on studentGrowthPlots.
An integer argument specifying the number of years forward associated with targets to be added to the student growth plots.
A Boolean argument (defaults to FALSE) indicating whether to anonymize studentGrowthPlots student, school and district names.
For student level anonymization, the function utilizes the randomNames package to produce gender and ethnicity based names based upon gender and ethnicity
codes available in sgp_object@Data.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to remove files produced by pdfLaTeX to produce studentGrowthPlot catalogs.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to just produce a sample studentGrowthPlot catalogs. Note: When producing
studentGrowthPlots for an entire state, considerable resources are required to produce this many reports. We are actively working on parallelizing this
functionality to reduce report production time by two orders of magnitude.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to produce studentGrowthPlots. Useful when one just wants to produce
wide formatted data without the actual student growth plots.
Argument (defaults to NULL) indicating whether to use baseline referenced SGPs for student growth plot construction. If not set by user,
argument will be set using SGPstateData which contains information on whether state is a cohort or baseline referenced system.
A Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether to zip school folders containing studentGrowthPlots.
Argument indicating the desired type of output format for student growth plots. Either 'PDF' (default), 'PNG', 'PDF_PIECES', or 'JSON'.
Integer argument (defaults to 5) indicating the number of years to display for the pdf student growth plot.
Boolean argument (defaults to TRUE) indicating whether test transition data will be used IF it's available. Setting to FALSE ignore previous test transition data, which would indicate a desire to 'forget the past'.
A vector indicating the year(s) for which to produce growthAchievementPlots. If missing the function will use the last year available
in the data to produce the growthAchievementPlots.
A vector indicating content area(s) to produce growthAchievementPlots using data available in sgp_object.
If missing the function will produce plots for all available content areas provided in the data.
A vector of student IDs indicating which students to produce growthAchievementPlots for. If missing the function will
use all available students in the data to produce growthAchievementPlots.
Either 'print' or 'presentation' indicating whether to optimize the plot for print form (light background) or presentation form (dark background).
Argument (defaults to NULL) indicating whether to calculate growth and achievement plots using percentile trajectories derived from baseline
referenced coefficient matrices. If not set by user, argument will be set using SGPstateData which contains information on whether state is a cohort or
baseline referenced system.
The maximum coefficient matrix order to use for each progression. Default is NULL which utilizes the maximum order available with the coefficient matrices.
Either 'Achievement Level Cuts' or 'Achievement Percentiles' defining where the percentile trajectories of the growth achievement plot will start from.
Character vector indicating where growthAchievementPlots should be placed. The default folder is 'Visualizations/growthAchievementPlots'.
A numeric value or Boolean vector indicating whether to create back extrapolated cutscores based upon nth percentile growth.
Boolean indicator for growth achievement plot indicating whether time dependent SGPs are to be used for student growth projections SGPt
A named list with, at a minimum, two elements indicating 1) the BACKEND package to be used for parallel computation and 2) the WORKERS list to specify the number of processors to be used in each major analysis. The BACKEND element can be set = to FOREACH or PARALLEL. Please consult the manuals and vignettes for information of these packages! The analyzeSGP help page contains more thorough explanation and examples of the parallel.config setup.
TYPE is a third element of the parallel.config list that provides necessary information when using FOREACH or PARALLEL packages as the backend. With BACKEND="FOREACH", the TYPE element specifies the flavor of 'foreach' backend. As of version 1.0-1.0, only "doParallel" is supported. TYPE=NA (default) produces summaries sequentially. If BACKEND = "PARALLEL", the parallel package will be used. This package combines deprecated parallel packages snow and multicore. Using the "snow" implementation of parallel the function will create a cluster object based on the TYPE element specified and the number of workers requested (see WORKERS list description below). The TYPE element indicates the users preferred cluster type (either "PSOCK" for socket cluster of "MPI" for an OpenMPI cluster). If Windows is the operating system, this "snow" implementation must be used and the TYPE element must = "PSOCK". Defaults are assigned based on operating system if TYPE is missing based on system OS. Unix/Mac OS defaults to the "multicore" to avoid worker node pre-scheduling and appears to be more efficient in these operating systems.
The WORKERS element is a list with GA_PLOTS (growth achievement plots) and SG_PLOTS (student growth plots) specifying the number of processors to be used. NOTE: choice of the number of cores is a balance between the number of processors available and the amount of RAM a system has; each system will be different and may require some adjustment.
Default is FOREACH as the back end, TYPE=NA and both plot WORKERS=1, which produces plots sequentially: 'list(BACKEND="FOREACH", TYPE=NA, WORKERS=list(GA_PLOTS=1, SG_PLOTS=1))'
Examples of various parallel configurations can be found in the examples for analyzeSGP and summarizeSGP.
Damian W. Betebenner dbetebenner@nciea.org and Adam Van Iwaarden avaniwaarden@nciea.org
Betebenner, D. W. (2012). Growth, standards, and accountability. In G. J. Cizek, Setting Performance Standards: Foundations, Methods & Innovations. 2nd Edition (pp. 439-450). New York: Routledge.
Betebenner, D. W. (2009). Norm- and criterion-referenced student growth. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 28(4):42-51.
bubblePlot, bubblePlot_Styles, studentGrowthPlot, growthAchievementPlot
if (FALSE) {
## visualizeSGP is Step 5 of 5 of abcSGP
Demonstration_SGP <- sgpData_LONG
Demonstration_SGP <- prepareSGP(Demonstration_SGP)
Demonstration_SGP <- analyzeSGP(Demonstration_SGP)
Demonstration_SGP <- combineSGP(Demonstration_SGP)
Demonstration_SGP <- summarizeSGP(Demonstration_SGP)
visualizeSGP(Demonstration_SGP)
## Produce a DEMO catalog of student growth plots
visualizeSGP(
sgp_object=Demonstration_SGP,
plot.types="studentGrowthPlot",
state="DEMO",
sgPlot.demo.report=TRUE)
## Production of sample student growth and achievement plots
visualizeSGP(
sgp_object=Demonstration_SGP,
plot.types="studentGrowthPlot",
state="DEMO",
sgPlot.districts=470,
sgPlot.schools=c(6418, 8008),
sgPlot.header.footer.color="#4CB9CC")
}
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