Star Unified Scale

The Unified Scale accomplishes two different objectives. First, it links Star Early Literacy Enterprise to the Star Reading scale. Second, it creates a new scale, applicable to Early Literacy, Reading, and Math, that has the desirable measurement properties of a Rasch score scale. The Unified Scale provides you with increased measurement precision and one consistent scale across all computer-adaptive Star assessments.

Educators have requested that students taking Star Reading and Star Early Literacy be placed on the same scale. Star Reading (and Star Math) have a scale score range of 0–1400, while Star Early Literacy is on a different scale with a score range of 300–900.

In response to the need for one scale, Renaissance developed the "unified score scale" that can be used to report scores for both Star Early Literacy and Star Reading (as well as Star Math), thus facilitating comparison of the achievement of children taking these two different tests. The Unified Scale score range applies to both English and Spanish versions of the Star programs and ranges from 0 to approximately 1400; Star Early Literacy scores range from 200–1100 and Star Reading (and Star Math) range from 600–1400.

To support the use of the scales, in Dashboards, the "Star Scale" is labeled as the "Star Enterprise Scale," in order to differentiate it from the "Star Unified Scale."

A note of caution is necessary here to discourage over-interpretation of this unified score scale: Although Star Early Literacy Enterprise and Star Reading Enterprise are fairly highly correlated, they measure different aspects of the progression from pre-literacy to fully-developed reading proficiency. Consequently, the highest claim that can be made about the Star Early Reading Rasch scores and scale scores is that they identify new Star Early Literacy scores that are approximately equivalent to Star Reading scores.

Related video: AssessMinutes—Unified Scale