[Renaissance Star Assessments] Answering “What’s Next?” After Receiving Your Data
[Renaissance Star Assessments] Answering “What’s Next?” After Receiving Your Data
Picture this: It’s the middle of September, and you’ve successfully administered your first round of Renaissance® Star® assessments to all students. You breathe a sigh of relief after making it through round one of your benchmark testing, and soon enough, you have your scores. So, now what?
For many districts, the next steps are ongoing data meetings, sticky note walls, and hours of spreadsheet analysis to tease out themes in skill gaps, identify specific grade levels in need of targeted intervention, and determine what your champion teachers are doing that’s moving the needle. These activities can certainly lead to key insights and data-driven instructional opportunities, but you’re also racing against the clock as those numbers become staler by the minute.
What if the “what’s next” step didn’t require this much time and energy? What if technology tools could help you take your Star data results and immediately turn them into actionable, individualized learning plans for each of your students? This is exactly what Edmentum can help provide, via an assessment integration with our powerful online program, Exact Path. Let’s take a closer look at how the integration works and what program needs it can help solve.
How does the integration work?
Exact Path supports K–12 reading, language arts, and math instruction and integrates with Star Math®, Star Reading®, and Star Early Literacy® assessments. We’ll support you through the onboarding process. Using a seamless integration, Renaissance and Edmentum programs communicate with one another to automatically drive the creation of individualized learning paths in Exact Path, without manual uploads or data entry. After each new assessment administration, your Renaissance assessment data will then guide the formation of updated learning paths that ensure that students are always focused on the skills they need most.
What program needs can Exact Path help solve?
As our assessment-driven individualized learning program, Exact Path is focused on identifying where students are ready to start learning and providing the self-paced instruction within each student’s zone of proximal development to promote academic growth. Exact Path is ideal for students in need of that first-time instructional component, whether because they are significantly below grade level or because they are on a much more accelerated path. A dedicated intervention block would also benefit from the comprehensive lesson module approach that Exact Path provides to ensure that students are able to correct any misconceptions in learning, are allotted time to apply those skills in a low-pressure environment, and are ultimately assessed on discrete skill mastery before moving ahead.
How are other Edmentum partners using the integration today?
Recently, I had the privilege of talking to Assistant Principal Allyson Stoy Long at Cayce Elementary School in South Carolina to learn more about how students and educators are using their Renaissance Star data integrated with Exact Path to personalize learning and support academic growth. She shared the following story:
“The whole district [uses Star assessments] three times a year. It's also a big driving piece as far as our RTI and intervention planning goes. But, the thing we have seen—is it's very closely aligned to the SC Ready scores, so when our students who are testing take [Star] at the beginning of April, we're able to predict where we think they're going to score on SC Ready and use it for last-minute intervention.
“We purchased the licenses for kindergarten through 5th [grade]. This year, we've really focused on 1st through 5th in the implementation process, mainly because our kindergartners don't take [Renaissance] Star [assessments] until the winter. But, because we've experienced such success with Exact Path, next year, we're going to start our kindergarteners where they go ahead and take it from the get-go so that they can do Exact Path the whole year.”
Make sure that your Renaissance Star results are working for you to give students the best chance at achieving success. Learn more about Exact Path on our website.
