Star Assessments report enhancements to better support teachers and students

At Renaissance, we continue to innovate and enhance our products that support educators and students. Based on requests we have received from educators; we are excited to share the following report enhancements to help educators more easily generate and customize the data they need to better inform next steps.

Star Data Insights: A new way to view screening participation rates

Data is critical to helping students succeed.

Universal screening provides the data educators need to understand the level of student performance and to help identify gaps in student learning. Identifying student needs early allows educators to develop additional support or intervention services that can improve student outcomes.

Our goal is to always provide educators with better ways to access data. Educators needed an easier, faster way to determine if students were screened. We are excited to share that we’ve created additional options in Data Insights within Star Assessments reporting, to help educators find the data they need, faster and easier. Educators now have the option to view Screening Participation Rates for their district, and for multiple schools and grades within their district, from within Star Data Insights*, as shown below.

*The level of data available within Star Data Insights depends on your user permissions. District Administrators can view data for any school in the district. School Administrators and Teachers can view data for their own school.

Educators can fine-tune their participation rate by customizing the grades expected to take each assessment. In addition, educators can then see a list of “unscreened” students from the “Explore the data” link, allowing them to quickly take action to ensure testing is completed as expected:

The new Screening Participation Rate options allow educators to easily get accurate screening participation data quickly and ensure all students have tested and are on the right path for future success.

For more information about Star Data Insights, please refer to this help article. Additionally, if you are interested in learning more about the importance of screening, check out our blog, The educator’s guide to universal screening in education.

New custom date range option for select reports

We’ve also enhanced the Star Screening Report and the Star State Standards Mastery Report by adding a custom date range option in which to view screening results.

Educators can now select a specific date range that allows them to narrow down and focus on data that is most meaningful to them to help inform instructional decisions:

Test Activity Report: Non-participation status option added

For various reasons, some of your students may not be taking Star Assessments. To better identify those students, we’ve added a “non-participation status” option, in which educators can select these students, and the reason they are not testing. The list of non-participating students will be included in the Star Test Activity Report (shown below).

Learn more about the new “non-participation status” option and the Star Test Activity Report.

Star Reading and Star Math accommodations practice

In 2022, we introduced an easier way to enable accommodations in Star Assessments to provide blind or visually impaired students with access to assistive tools and technologies that allow them to showcase what they know. We are excited to announce that students are now able to practice using the accommodation tools, including response masking, color contrast, highlighter, line reader, and more, prior to taking their Star Reading or Star Math assessment.

Once these students choose to take the Star Reading or Star Math assessment, they will see the following screen, allowing them the option to try the accommodation tools or take the Star assessment:

Allowing students to practice using the accommodation tools prior to testing ensures students know how and are comfortable using the tools, providing a more positive testing experience. To learn more about setting accommodations, please refer to this help article.

Renaissance continues to make valuable enhancements to meet educators’ and students’ needs. View our Products Updates page to learn about additional product enhancements and/or new features.