STAR Assessment Success Stories - STAR Assessment Case Study

Educators across the nation are experiencing tremendous success with STAR assessments.

Here are some current examples of that success:

Student confidence up, discipline referrals down in Ohio school.

Data is the key to pinpointing every student’s perfect learning zone.

New Mexico teacher sees immense value in new STAR reports.

STAR data is a crucial piece for aiding educators in all three Response to Intervention stages.

See more Success Stories and view our Extraordinary Educators Newsletter.

Student confidence up, discipline referrals down in Ohio school.

On the way home from a recent conference, Donna Ginn and a colleague from Batavia Middle School, Batavia, Ohio, were commenting that they hadn’t seen as many of the familiar faces in the office lately for discipline referrals. She made a note to run the specific numbers at year-end, but she knows referrals are down from this time last year—and attendance is already up 2 percent.

“We’re sure there’s a direct correlation between these improvements and what we’re doing with STAR data this year,” said Ginn, a 17-year veteran at Batavia but new in her role as Title I Teacher and RTI Coordinator. “Since implementing STAR Reading and STAR Math this fall as screening tools for RTI, we're better able to target and work with kids on their levels, and this is increasing their confidence and desire to be here."

Batavia students are making very promising headway, ranging from six months to over two years of growth from late September STAR testing to the mid-January test. Ginn says this progress stems from Batavia’s use of STAR data to identify which students are struggling, then grouping them for targeted instruction on the problem material to help them master skills.

“With STAR, we’re now able to take our data to a new level and start interventions much earlier in the year,” Ginn said. “It’s been valuable to print out screening reports for each teacher that immediately identify who’s on track for passing the Ohio Achievement Assessments (OAA) and who is not. Our teachers are implementing tutoring, small groups, etc. based on that data.”

Ginn uses STAR Reading and STAR Math to screen Batavia’s approximately 700 students in grades 5-9. Following the color coding system of the Instructional Planning report and Screening report, she color codes the latest STAR test and state test scores to group students into Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions.

“If I have students coming up on Intervention or Urgent Intervention on both assessments, I know we have to help that student,” Ginn said.

Ginn takes the information to the staff to help guide necessary interventions and pullout groups. She also provides State Standards reports that point to the specific state indicators requiring extra work. Batavia has been able to identify so many needs in reading and math that paraprofessionals are helping teach small groups alongside other teacher-led reading classes. Small groups are also trumping some science and social studies time, with the understanding that reading improvement will have a positive effect on these subjects, too.

Following group work, students re-test with STAR and those demonstrating an increase in skill mastery move on. Those who do not show they’re on track to mastery are re-taught and re-tested. This targeted, small-group approach is working for Batavia.

“Kids who used to blow off studying started realizing that they had to show mastery to move on, so they started studying more and making gains,” Ginn said. “At the same time, it’s also helping kids who legitimately need the time and extra help to master skills. We have high hopes about our OAA test in May.”

STAR data is especially proving to be a “dream” for Batavia’s special education teachers, who find the Instructional Planning Report indispensable for writing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). The report shows each student’s projected growth, pinpointing core curriculum standards not yet mastered. Teachers can easily create three to five individualized goals and project realistic percentages in those goals, all based on current mastery levels.

“It’s taking the legwork and guesswork out of what each student needs because everything is right there in one report,” Ginn said. “Professional development was valuable in showing staff the reports available and how they worked, as well as other resources. Plus, the live chat is excellent.”

There are two key questions that drive student success at Pennsylvania’s Dover Area School District: “How do we assist students who have not demonstrated mastery of the competencies?” and “How do we assist those students who have demonstrated mastery and require accelerated learning plans?”

The district’s efforts to address remediation and acceleration began in 2006 with launching Response to Intervention (RTI)—followed by Response to Instruction and Intervention (RTII). Director of Curriculum Instruction Dr. Sue Kanigsberg said this ultimately prompted the district to seek aligned, research-based interventions that would also guide instruction. In their meticulous quest, one name kept surfacing—STAR.

“We made a three-year commitment to use STAR Reading, STAR Math, and STAR Early Literacy because we’d put in six months of research and we were so confident in the products,” Kanigsberg said. Kanigsberg said that this solid commitment, including a business plan with documented strategies and goals, is critical for success because it allows the district to chart the course for the long-haul.

The commitment also overcomes the hesitancy that teachers sometimes feel with one-year plans, getting everyone on board right away. The STAR programs are used at Dover Area School District as tools for screening, monitoring benchmarker progress, and driving instruction and curriculum adjustments. Screening, or what Kanigsberg terms, “opening a window of assessment,” is done three times per year in both reading and math for students in grades K-6.

Now that the district is using STAR, Kanigsberg said she and others still find value in the screening and diagnostic reports but are amazed by the learning progressions, progress monitoring, and other longitudinal reports available.

“The original STAR was nice, but now I feel like a diagnostician,” said Kanigsberg. “The learning progressions and sample prerequisites really drill down to what, diagnostically and technically, is the problem—and exactly what to do about it. It’s just amazing.”

Kanigsberg also appreciated that STAR is a tool that will continue to offer support as the district grows. “We love that when we’re ready, we’ll have flexibility with the goal-setting wizard to customize for more ambitious goals. This will help kids who are behind to make greater gains more quickly, and catch up.”

The STAR implementation is not just to keep students at Dover Area School District out of placement. The fact that STAR includes Mathematical Instructional Level (MIL) and Instructional Reading Level (IRL) provided the necessary numbers to change the starting point for high achievers and gifted learners, pinpointing their perfect zones.

“Instead of starting on grade level, which they’re already past, we can start it on their accelerated level and find their exact target,” Kanigsberg said. “This is a big deal because now we’re not just tailoring for RTI and special education, but also for advanced learners.”

Kanigsberg said that despite being in just year two of implementation, the district feels further along. She credits much of that feeling to valuable professional development. From day one, Renaissance technical support walked her through how to create schools, teacher assignments, student groups, and much more—giving her all the help she needed to confidently roll out training to others in the district.

“Without Renaissance professional development, we wouldn’t have moved as quickly. We were skilled because of that training,” Kanigsberg said. “It’s critical, because if teachers feel uncomfortable, then testing and assessing scenarios will be uncomfortable for the children.”

Although Kanigsberg is responsible for the district’s data crunching, curriculum instruction, funding and training, implementation success is definitely a team effort. She calls it a “funnel”—district data team meetings twice a year, building data team meetings following screening three times a year, grade-level “Pouring Over Data” (POD) meetings weekly, and individual teachers using data to drive instruction daily.

“All of the pieces have to be in the funnel for success to happen,” Kanigsberg said. “STAR products have allowed our teachers to become preventionists and diagnosticians of student learning difficulties and enrichment/acceleration needs.”

As a computer lab teacher at Milan Elementary in New Mexico, Jane Williams helps students—and teachers—get the most out of technology. Williams supports the many Renaissance Place products used at the school, offering troubleshooting and tips on accessing and reading reports.

She can’t wait to share the latest STAR capabilities with teachers. “I’m excited about the changes in STAR and feel that the new reports will be very beneficial to our students, staff, and parents,” said Williams, who recently attended professional development on the updates. “The validity and ease of creating reports is crucial to our school district. We rely on this data for so many reasons in today’s educational setting.”

One of those reasons is ensuring their students are on track for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Williams is responsible for running growth reports for demographic groups that the school monitors. This information is used for Milan Elementary’s Educational Plan for Student Success (EPSS), a data-and achievement-based strategic improvement plan that serves as another guide in helping children reach AYP.

Williams said that while progress monitoring reports have been used in the past, the new Annual Progress Report, State Standards Report, and State Performance Report provide invaluable visuals of how students, classes, and the district are doing.

“We can now group our students according to state standards as well as to the STAR test,” Williams said. “The new reports will help everyone—students, teachers, and parents—see exactly what needs to happen to reach proficiency and above on state tests.”

Milan Elementary is part of a community with four prisons and a high student mobility rate among the schools in the district. The STAR programs are used regularly for screening and monitoring student progress. These quick assessments give valuable information to the teachers in meeting student needs, helping them easily identify and track students for various reading and math groups.

Williams said that the new reporting features take that value to the next level. “The new Instructional Planning Reports and Learning Progressions will be an immense help to teachers with the grouping and skill recommendations they provide,” Williams said.

“They support individual student instruction plans that are developed for struggling readers.” Lessons will be further simplified with the Learning Progressions feature, pinpointing the skills students need to understand the lesson and offering instant access to worked examples and sample problems.

“Teachers don’t have to scramble to locate examples on their own. They can easily search for resources on specific skills by keyword,” Williams said. “Having worksheets readily available for struggling students is a benefit as well.”

The new STAR reports also give teachers access to data while at home, offering greater lesson plan convenience. Williams sees good things ahead for Milan Elementary and says RP professional development, provided by the school district, is paving the way.

“Printing the reports and studying the data to make instructional changes are key to our students’ success. It’s important that we use the programs correctly and consistently throughout the whole school,” Williams said. “Training has always been professional, informative, pertinent, and fun, and we leave each in-service with valuable information and tools we can begin using the very next day.”

STAR data is a crucial piece for aiding educators in all three Response to Intervention stages.

Paula Defley, Education Strategist in Special Education for Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish Schools, will never forget when Hurricane Katrina destroyed six of their nine schools and every home.

Educational consultant Scott Johnson also witnessed the significant psychological, geographical, and emotional effects on nearly every district in Katrina’s path. But he points to a positive that emerged from the devastation.

“For the most part, all of the schools have increased their collective performance on accountability scales since the storm,” said Johnson, who aids Plaquemines Parish Schools and other districts with the application of data to response to intervention (RTI) efforts. “I attribute these growth factors to more money and better training plans, but most importantly, districts have learned the value in ‘knowing’ the facts—data.”

This data—and a systematic way of collecting, monitoring, and tracking it—is integral to RTI success, says Johnson. He sees technology as the most efficient, effective way to manage data, and says Renaissance tools, especially STAR Reading and STAR Math, afford schools a chance to easily visualize what is happening with regard to intervention. “STAR allows users the scope they do not have in paper and pencil assessment,” Johnson said. “In RTI, we can’t look at one two-minute probe as the end-all assessment, but at a series of these assessments. With STAR, teachers can assess the needs of students, track changes in performance, and discuss data in real time, not weeks after the instruction and assessment occurred.”

Because STAR plays a role in multiple stages of the RTI process, it’s a good fit for Johnson’s three basic tenets of RTI: screen, intervene, and reconvene. Screening is the identification phase, pinpointing the level at which students are performing relative to benchmarks and standards.

“We use all of the STAR assessments for universal screenings three times a year for grades K–10,” Defley said of Plaquemines Parish School district, a STAR user since 2005. “We also use them as weekly progress monitoring tools for students in Tiers 2 and 3. Having tools like those assessments has helped all levels of district personnel focus on the growth of students and use that data to drive instruction.”

Progress monitoring is a key aspect of the “intervene” tenet because it helps identify what is or isn’t working, and allows for timely adaptation and action.

“As interventionists, we need to be clear how long, and at what level, a child remains in intervention,” Johnson said. “In order to know these things, we must progress monitor on a regular, scheduled basis. Not many products online offer schools a chance to do this as easily as STAR.”

The third tenet, reconvene, requires sharing and reviewing the data. This means teachers either informally discussing classroom reports in the hallway, or meeting more formally in large groups. Either way, the key is to share results—only made possible with reliable data.

Johnson feels that STAR simplifies all three tenets of RTI, automating a portion of the work and increasing the integrity of the intervention plan—not to mention easing teachers’ growing workloads. Compiling data, creating graphs, applying decision rules, and storing data are just some examples of tasks made faster and easier for teachers using STAR.

“With correct application, STAR provides a very precise picture of current skill levels, and a picture is a great way to read data,” Johnson said. “STAR uses color-coded displays as well as at-risk criteria, which can be altered, to illustrate important data. In STAR, it’s easy to see those changes, monitor growth, and set criteria for making decisions.”

Such easy-display technology is what it takes to open up critical discussions as well as help classroom teachers drive the process of intervention, which Johnson feels will help RTI reach its pinnacle. Things are headed in the right direction, with school meetings no longer a depository of “what I think happened” reporting, but instead data-based discussion.

Defley says evidence of their RTI growth is their solid District RTI Team and monthly intervention meetings at each school where progress monitoring data are analyzed. Teachers are now aware of the importance of documenting any interventions within their differentiated instruction, as well as sharing that information at grade level and department meetings. Also, the district requires intervention and progress monitoring data for all students who are in evaluation for special education.

Defley added that their RTI progress meant that Plaquemines Parish School District was finally ready this year to give it a go on their own without Johnson, who’d been on board as a consultant since 2001. “We’ve grown so much as a district with RTI,” Defley said.