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Viewing/Editing School Benchmarks

  • Updated

How do I get to this page?

  1. On the Home page, select Star Reading, Star Early Literacy, Star Math, or Star Spanish; then, select Manage Goals & Benchmarks.

  2. On the Goals & Benchmarks page, select View or Edit Benchmarks.

Who can do this with default user permissions?

  • District Level Administrators, District Staff, School Level Administrators, School Staff: can view and edit
  • Teachers: can view

Several of the Star reports use cut scores, benchmarks, and benchmark structures to identify students who are having difficulty.

A cut score is a Percentile Rank (PR) score. Cut scores that are chosen as targets for students to meet or surpass are benchmarks.

School benchmarks are targets that apply to every student in a school (each grade has its own benchmarks).

Changes to benchmark structures or cut scores will not take effect until the next school day.

Setting the default benchmarks for the district (district level administrators and district staff only)

In any situation where a benchmark is needed (for example, when creating a report), if the user doesn't choose a specific benchmark to use, the default benchmark is used. The default benchmark is used by all schools in a district and is set on a product-by-product basis.

To change the default benchmark:

  1. Use one of the methods listed above to open the View Benchmarks page.
  2. Select Edit Default Benchmark.
  3. In the window that opens, select the default benchmark to be used for each product listed (district, school, or state/linked).
    In the pop-up window, each Star product used by the schools in the district is listed; each has a drop-down list where you can select the default benchmark. The Save and Cancel buttons are at the bottom.
    • State benchmarks are only available for Star Reading and Star Math.
    • Changes to a default benchmark will not take effect until the next school day.
  4. Select Save (or Cancel to close the pop-up window without saving your changes).
  1. On the View Benchmarks page, select the product you want to view/edit benchmarks for . (The current default benchmark for the selected product will appear below the drop-down list.)
    The Benchmark Manager page, with Star Reading as the product and the tab for school benchmarks selected. The table at the bottom shows the benchmarks for all grades.
  2. Select the School tab .
  3. Use the School drop-down list to select a different school, if necessary (personnel who only have access to one school will not need to select a school).
  4. On the School tab, for the selected product, you can see the current settings for the school benchmark structure and the school cut scores for each grade at the selected school.

    The benchmark structure is the number of categories, the category names, and the minimum proficiency level chosen. There are 4 default categories, but the number of categories in the structure can be changed; you can have just 2 categories or up to 5 categories.

    For Star Early Literacy Spanish, we have normed data for grades K–3. For Star Math Spanish, and Star Reading Spanish, we currently have normed data for grades 1–8. We continue to gather norming data from higher grades, but at this time no Spanish benchmarks are available outside of those grades.

  5. Select Edit Benchmark Structure to edit the school benchmark structure for the selected product.
    1. In the pop-up window, use the drop-down list to choose how many categories you want in the benchmark structure (the default is 4, but you can have 2–5 categories).
      Making a selection from the Number of Categories drop-down list.
    2. You can change the names of the categories from their default by typing new names in the appropriate fields .

      Of the four category fields shown, the top three have buttons on the right so you can select which one should be the minimum proficiency level. The Save, Default, and Cancel buttons are at the bottom.
    3. Select one of the categories as the minimum proficiency level you want students in the school to reach . You cannot use the lowest level as the minimum.
    4. Once you have made your changes, select Save . You can also select Default to restore the original default settings (4 categories: At/Above Benchmark, On Watch, Intervention, and Urgent Intervention, with At/Above Benchmark as the minimum proficiency level), or Cancel to close the pop-up window without saving your changes.
  6. Select Edit Cut Scores to change the PR values of the cut score categories for the selected product.
    The Edit Cut Scores button.
  7. In the Edit School Cut Scores pop-up window, use the drop-down lists in the row for a grade to set the cut score values for the categories in that grade.
    In this example, the drop-down list for the On Watch category in Kindergarten has been selected; the user is setting it at a Percentile Rank of 40. The Save and Cancel buttons are at the bottom.
    • The PR values must increase from left to right.
    • The numbers you enter are the upper limit for a category; the lower limit is calculated as the top value of the prior category plus 1. For example, if you had four categories, and the upper limit of the third one (On Watch) was set to 63 PR, At/Above Benchmark would be set to At/Above 64 PR.
    • You do not have to enter an upper limit for the rightmost category (it is calculated based on the value of the next-highest category).
    Each set of school benchmark categories has default PR values:
    [ open screen-readable version in new window ]
  8. Once you have set the cut scores, select Save , or select Cancel to close the pop-up window without saving your changes.

    Changes to benchmarks or cut scores will not take effect until the next school day.

    If cut scores are changed, all activities (such as past assessments) will be recategorized.

For additional guidance regarding benchmarks and cut scores, see:

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