2020 Product Release Notes

Star Assessments

• Star Computer Adaptive Test:
  • The first questions students see on their Star assessment (SP and EN) will ask them if they are testing inside school. This data that is collected will allow us to report on testing locations on the following reports: Star Test Record Report, Star Summary Report and the Star Screening Report.
• Star CBM:
  • Educators must choose whether the assessments were administered ‘In person’ or ‘Remote’ for all administration formats. This information will be included in the CSV export.

Star Assessments

• Star Computer Adaptive Test:
  • A new Screening Comparison tab is added to the Star Record Book which allows users to view multiple Star products on a single report for multiple screening windows.
  • A PDF button was added to each page of the Star Record Book to allow users to save or print data as needed.
  • The Latest Tests tab now shows arrows next to a students score to indicate a benchmark change.
  • Scaled Score and benchmark projections for end of year are not provided for Star English assessments on the Student Detail view.
• Star Spanish:
  • The last two Star Spanish Learning Progressions (LP’s) were released.
    • Progresión de la lectura para CCEE
    • Progresión de la lectura para CaCCEE (California)
  • Focus Skills for Star Spanish were added to the Instructional Planning Reports

Renaissance Growth Platform

• The Security Options page was renamed to IP Addresses & Product Access on the Product Administration page.

Accelerated Reader

• Updates to Accelerated Reader Record Book:
  • The “Goals” tab was renamed to “Student Goals”
  • The order of the tabs will now be: Student Goals | Latest Quiz | Certifications
    • The Student Goals tab will be selected by default
  • The tab style has been uplifted

Star Assessments

• Star Computer Adaptive Test
  • More insight added to the Student Details page of the Star Record Book, including the ability to see a projected score if two assessments have been taken.
  • A ‘Scale’ dropdown was added to this report to allow educators to view the Lexile Scale.
  • District Admins, District Staff, School Admins and School Staff can share groups with other personnel. These users will see an “Assign Additional Personnel” section above the “Assign Students to Groups” table.
  • Creating Groups:
    • When a single class is selected, the student list will automatically update based on roster changes (if a student is enrolled/removed from the class, the group will update)
    • When multiple classes/students are selected, groups will not update based on roster changes.
  • Users gain the ability to select Star Spanish products when creating groups to set goals based on Star Spanish scores.
• If groups are made of students chosen by means of a student search, users will be able to add/remove students within already existing groups they’ve created.
• Star CBM:
  • Educators now have the ability to decide if they’d like students to be automatically logged out after completing an online assessment. This makes it easier for students to take additional assessments back to back if desired.
  • If you select grades 4 through 6, you’ll see an Extra Passage dropdown list for Oral Reading. If you choose Yes, please! Your student will get an additional, non-fiction passage that is being tested for future inclusion in the Star CBM Reading product. Once you enter these results, you will not see the scores in Star CBM since the scores are still being established, this is simply to help Renaissance establish scores for those grades.

Renaissance Growth Platform

• We’ve updated the error message that will show when a user runs into an issue when trying to add their email address to populate an error code to provide to customer support.

myON

• v3.26.0 has been released:
  • Publisher book bands – Students whose schools purchase premium publishers like Disney will now see a book band with logos for those publishers. We expect this to improve the reader experience by surfacing high-interest titles.
  • A new Extended User Activity page was added for all users on the Activity page so readers can see all the books they’ve ever read.
• Faculty role enhancements – It is not uncommon for teachers to be assigned to students that are not in their same myON building. This is becoming ever more common with increased distance learning due to COVID-19. To better facilitate this and enable automated rostering to accomplish these pairings in myON, the myON specialist role is being absorbed into an enhanced and more flexible faculty role that allows for multi-building teacher-to-student relationships and automated rostering through Enroll for all data sources.
• v3.27.0 has been released:
  • All users can now log into any active building in their district, rather than the building they were assigned to. We will use the building picker to identify account, rather than building.
  • Students can now use group codes to join any group in their district, instead of just their building!
  • Updates to the admin experience when viewing the Student View page, allowing them to assign students across buildings.

Freckle

• New student messaging was added for when Freckle on RGP students click on the Freckle tile before any of their teachers have verified their emails.
  • “Your teacher isn’t ready for you to practice in Freckle yet”

Star Assessments

• Knovation resources now available by default in Planner.Knovation is a content aggregator that creates, curates, and continually updates an index of Open Educational Resources (OERs). Content providers included are BetterLesson, CK-12 Foundation, Discovery Education, EngageNY, Khan Academy, PBS, ReadWriteThink, Sophia Learning, Texas Gateway, and many others.
• Star CBM Reading (K-6)and Star CBM Math(K-3) are new products that assess the building blocks of reading and math with one-minute measures delivered directly to students online, printed, or in mixed format.

Star Assessments

• Star Computer Adaptive Test – The updated 2020-2021 Learning Progression released! NOTE: This clears out the mastery for Star assessments taken prior to the update.
• Star Spanish
  • Star Spanish Goals:Users will be able to set Scaled Score goals in Star Spanish for all grades! The Spanish goals will appear on the Star Goal History and Star Student Progress Monitoring Reports. Percentile Rank and Student Growth Percentile goals are limited to the below grades:
    • Star Reading Spanish: Grades 1-8
    • Star Math Spanish: Grades 1-8
    • Star Early Literacy Spanish: Grades K-3
  • New Star Spanish Learning Progression, the first ever Spanish Learning Progression in the market!
  • Educators can use the Monitor Student Mastery Dashboard, Star States Standards Mastery – Class Report, Instructional Planning Reports, and the Star Diagnostic Report to view Star Spanish scores
  • Star Spanish SGP’s will now be included as an option on the Growth Report, Consolidated Assessment Proficiency Report, and My Created Reports.
    • SGP’s are available in Star Reading Spanish and Star Math Spanish for grades 1-8, and in Star Early Literacy Spanish for grades K-3.

Renaissance Growth Platform

• The new Transfer Student Data feature provides the ability to retain students’ academic progress whenever students move between Renaissance Growth Platform sites.
• Our new in-product Resource Center is a destination for key resources to help educators be successful. In this launch, the Getting Started section includes links to the Back-to-School resources, Upgrade Toolkit, and Star Assessments Toolkit.

Accelerated Reader

• Improvements to the Summary Diagnostic Report
  • New filter to limit quiz results associated with a specific class
  • New option to change the diagnostic code to identify students with an average below 90% instead of 85%

Star Assessments

• Enhanced linking to Star Reports now in Schoolzilla Starter by selecting Other Reports from within a Metric Zoom, which will take users directly to the tab of the Reports area in the Renaissance portal.

Renaissance Growth Platform

• District Screening Windows Introduced:
  • District screening windows are used by district level administrators and district staff to view assessment data at the district level in Schoolzilla and Schoolzilla Starter. A district screening window can include all schools in the district or a specific subset of schools.
  • By default, there are three District Screening Windows (Fall: 8/15–9/30, Winter: 12/1–1/15, Spring: 4/15–5/31).
• Redesign of Classes & Courses Page:
  • Organized to quickly show the user all their classes with the ability to easily identify which classes have not had their setup completed.
  • A new Search feature, with options to search by course name, course code, or class name.
  • Improvements to the product assignment process that help finish class setup in just a few clicks!
  • Ability to assign product to classes in bulk, even if they are in different courses!
  • Page renamed from Courses & Classes to Classes & Courses

myON

• Enroll 3.1 was released. This introduced the Renaissance data source that allowed for shared rostering

Accelerated Reader

• Enhancements were made to the Book Labels Report:
  • Improved quiz title selection process
  • Selected titles are displayed on the report customizations page
  • Ability to the select a different number of labels per title
  • Ability to select the starting position for your labels

Star Assessments

• Star Computer Adaptive Test: Customers can now access printable lists of Focus Skills from our corporate website: https://www.renaissance.com/focus-skills/
  • You can filter on subject area, state, grade and domain group.
  • There is a “Print Grade” button in the upper right-hand corner.
• New updates made to Star Growth Report:
  • Users can now select the new ‘Current SGP (Student Growth Percentile)’ radio button to quickly see Current SGP
  • Users can select the new ‘Select Dates for Growth’ radio button if they want to select a specific school year and specific test windows.

Star Assessments

• Schoolzilla Starter is now accessible on the Renaissance home page and a few Star customers gained access to an early adopter release
• Improvements made to Star Custom
  • Enhanced process for creating your own custom assessments
  • Improved preview option
• Star Computer Adaptive Test: The Star Record Book enhancements
  • Key performance indicators added to Record Book (short test time, practice not passed, etc.)
  • Star Spanish users can now access the Star Record Book from their home page by clicking on the Star Spanish tile, then the Record Book.
  • Now Star English and Star Spanish scores show side by side, instead of just the latest test.
  • Administrators and District staff can view groups on the following reports: Star Student Progress Monitoring Report and the Star Instructional Planning – Class Report
  • Improved student selector on the Star Student Progress Monitoring Report and the Star Instructional

Accelerated Reader

• Updates to Student Discovery page in RGP
  • Students who access myON through RGP will be able to open a book in myON through their AR discovery page via the ‘Read Now’ button.
  • Refreshed options to ‘Browse Articles by Category’ in AR.
  • New filtering options in AR.

Star Assessments

• New Date and Time Restrictions – this new School Level Preference allows users to restrict when students can take Star Computer Adaptive assessments and Star Custom assessments.

myON

• CEFR and Cambridge English Language Assessment metrics were made available in myON buildings with the Star permission, as well as modifications to the myON with Star admin report to display these.

Accelerated Reader

• Reading snapshots are now available so educators can celebrate their students’ reading successes (reading totals) and achievements (goals met), in an image or as a website counter.
• Educators now have the ability to delete reading snapshots from the Gallery.

Star Assessments

• Enhancements and fixes to the Star Progress Monitoring Report:
  • Users can set more than one custom date goal
  • Users can now see more than one non-overlapping goal on the report