2024 Product Release Notes

Lalilo

• Renaissance Educator Academy Access
  • Users who are already enrolled in Renaissance Educator Academy, have access to Lalilo and an entry point through another product, can access Educator Academy through a link in the Resources tab of the Lalilo teacher site.

myON

• v4.18.2 Release
  • Teacher Activity Dashboard has been modernized with the following updates:
    • Renaming of table tabs along top (tabs vary by permission i.e. Lexile is only present for schools with Lexile permission).
    • All Reader data will be combined into one tab called "Reading".
    • Radio selectors will be added to drill down information (i.e Time Spent Reading, Books Finished, Pages Read).
    • Updates to progress bar styling.
    • Updates to Assignments tab to display more helpful information and allows users to quickly click to View Progress from dashboard view.
    • Added a Print button.
  • Improvements to the home and login pages to respond properly on mobile phones using a set viewpoint.
  • Addition of a Duplicate option to the meatball menu for the "Archived Assignments" section.
  • An update to the language on the "Archived" page to better guide users on how to reuse Archived assignments.
  • Adds defined assignment completion metrics to the "View Progress" page above the table.
  • When building an assignment, users can click to read the book, and it will open in a new tab so that they can read the book and go back to creating their assignment.

Lalilo

• Update Class Avatar
  • Teachers and school staff are now able to update their class avatar directly in the app.
• New Vocabulary and Phonology Content Added
  • 26 new Vocabulary Unit lessons available for Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 which address language standards including Multiple Meaning Words, Shades of Meaning, Affixes, Categorizing, and Figurative Language.
  • 11 new direct instruction lessons were introduced to the Phonology Unit, focusing on student-led learning for Kindergarten and Grade 1. These lessons develop essential skills like Counting Words, Hearing Rhymes, and Blending & Segmenting Phonemes.
• Teacher Experience Updates
  • Custom lesson descriptions added to over 770 EN lessons.
  • Ratings are now displayed on the comment page of teacher NPS surveys.

Freckle

• ELA Writing Skills Practice
  • 42 new skills have been added for English Language Arts Skills practice. Freckle now offers 158 skills across the three major types of writing: informative, argumentative, and narrative.

Star Assessments

• Texas STAAR Spanish Benchmarks
  • Educators in Texas can now view state test predictions on the Texas STAAR for students taking Star Reading and Star Math Spanish assessments.
• Star Phonics - UI Updates
  • Assessment Notes - A Notes field will appear below each word to enter notes for the corresponding word.
  • When creating an assessment, educators can now search for a student by name without needing to populate any of the drop-down menus. If selections are made from the drop-down menus, the list will only include students based on those selections.
• Star CBM Reading - RAN Measures Added to Data Insights
  • Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) measures are now available from the Measure drop-down for the following Data Insights tiles: Moving Up, Participation Rate, and Proficiency Rate.

Renaissance Analytics

• Star Phonics in Renaissance Analytics
  • Renaissance Analytics will show the following Star Phonics metrics:
    • number of students in the district or school who have completed one or more Star Phonics screener assessments in the current screening window.
    • number of students in the district or school who have completed one or more Star Phonics diagnostic assessments in the past 28 days.

myON

• v4.18.1.1 Release
  • Increases the number of students allowed to be assigned to an assignment from 200 to 800.
  • Makes faculty assignment rules behave the same as building admin assignment rules:
    • Faculty will be able to publish assignments without having to assign students or set a due date.
    • If students are selected to be assigned, then a due date is required.

Lalilo

• Standards Displayed for Classes in Wisconsin
  • Teachers with premium accounts in Wisconsin can now see reporting for their students based on their state standards, the Wisconsin Standards for English Language Arts.
  • Reporting is retroactive, so teachers can see any prior activity reported in the standards section of an individual student's page.
• Student App Accessible from Mobile
  • Student app is now accessible from mobile with a screen zoom up to 400%.

Renaissance Next for Teachers

• Email Verification
  • Eligible Renaissance Next teachers who have Freckle and Lalilo who do not have a verified email address will now see a new email verification page when logging in.
  • A verification email will be sent to the email address provided.
  • Once verified, the teacher will not see the message again but be taken directly into Renaissance Next for teachers.

Star Assessments

• Star Student Progress Monitoring Report – CSV Option Added
  • Educators can now export student data via a CSV file.
• Consolidated Reports – Update
  • Teachers link has been removed.
  • Label above school drop-down is now titled Students.
• 2024 Learning Progression Updates for the following subjects and states
  • Reading:
    • North Dakota
    • Utah
    • South Carolina
    • New Jersey
    • Kansas
    • Florida
    • Oklahoma
  • Math:
    • Nebraska
    • Arkansas
    • West Virgina
    • North Dakota
    • Virginia
    • New Jersey
  • Spanish Language Arts
    • Illinois
    • New Mexico
• Star CBM Reading Overall Risk Score & Historical Extract
  • The Overall Risk Score is not included in Star Historical Extracts
  • The Star CBM Reading – Overall Risk Score preference must be enabled in order to see the score in the historical extract.
• Star Preschool – Historical Assessment Data
  • Educators can now view student historical assessment data from the Overall tab.
• Star Phonics – Educator Tile Update
  • A drop-down feature was added to the Educator tile.
    • Educator Login - logs the user into the Star Phonics application as an educator, as usual.
    • Student Test Code page – takes the user to the student test code entry screen.
      • As the Student Test Code entry screen is a universal page, educators can access it on any device using any account — theirs or a student's. Once on the page, teachers enter a student’s test code to start an assessment. After the student completes the assessment, teachers can enter a new test code for a different student — all without needing to log in and out of accounts on the student device.
• Star Phonics – Exporting Student Diagnostic Data
  • Administrators can now export student Diagnostic data
  • The data will be downloaded in a .csv file, which can then be opened in a spreadsheet program.
  • District Admins can export student data for either the district or a school. School Admins can export student data for their school
• Star Phonics - New Scoring Feature
  • New "Sounded Out" Scoring Option
    • Educators can now easily distinguish when a student sounds out a word versus pronouncing it incorrectly with our new "Sounded Out" scoring option.
    • The screening and diagnostic tile reports will specify which words were sounded out.

myON

• myON v4.18.1 Release
  • Adds support for ClassLink direct URLs.
  • Switches date picker to native month/day drop-downs for school year epoch option.
• myON v4.18.0 Release
  • Assignments has a permanent place in the navigation header for all users.
  • New Book Bag - Quickly add books to the book bag and then create an assignment or recommend books to students.
  • Updated book tile and book modal (for non-student users).
  • New Assignments Page
    • New interface to create and edit assignments. Nearly all Projects functionality remains the same.
    • Assignments now grouped by Active, Drafts, and Archived.
    • Students will be able to read or record in books from Assignments, with educators being able to set completion metrics around these activities.
    • Added a new Oral Response activity enabling educators to provide prompts for students to record an audio of their responses.
  • Favorites - Created a way to quickly push books to either a group of students or an individual student. Bands on student dashboard are per educator, no longer per bundle. Educators do not need to worry about managing content pushed to students – once recommended, the students decide what they would like to do with it. Books disappear from the band after 30 days or whichever date the educator selects.
  • Added support for new book languages: Japanese, German, Hindi, and Korean.

Accelerated Reader

• Accelerated Reader Average Book Level Goal Retirement
  • Reading range goals were introduced as a Reading Goals Model in 2022 with the clear intention of retiring average book level goals. Using reading range goals is a significantly better practice than average book level goals, as it provides stronger guidance and encourages students to read a wider variety of texts.

Freckle

• Individual Classroom License
  • New license option allows 40 students maximum, no usage limit. Contains teacher reporting and provides all Freckle core features.
  • $250USD/$296CAD – available to all US and Canadian Freckle users.
  • 365-day subscription starts from the date of purchase and automatically renews.
• Guided Practice Updates
  • Guided Practice is now available for all Grades K-5 Focus Skills across the US
  • Guided practice example content now demonstratable from Teacher Dashboard
• Educator Academy in Teacher Dashboard
  • The Educator Academy is now available from the Resources section in the top navigation of Freckle's Teacher Dashboard

Lalilo

• Individual Classroom License
  • New license option allows 40 students maximum, no usage limit. Contains teacher reporting and provides all Lalilo core features.
  • $250USD/$296CAD – available to all US and Canada Lalilo users in both English and French curriculums.
  • 365-day subscription starts from the date of purchase and automatically renews.
• Additional State Standards Released
  • The following state standards are available for teachers with premium Lalilo accounts to use in reporting:
    • Idaho Content Standards for English Language Arts
    • Louisiana Student Standards for English Language Arts
    • Utah State Standards for English Language Arts
    • New Jersey Student Learning Standards for English Language Arts (2023)
  • Reporting is retroactive, so teachers can see any prior activity reported in the standards section of an individual student's page.

Freckle

• Goal setting is now available for grades K-2. Previously, it was only available for grades 3 and up.
• Students can now access the new Guided Support at any time during their independent practice in Adaptive, Targeted, and Focus Skills Math.

Lalilo

• Teacher Experience Updates
  • Teachers with premium accounts in AR, CO, KS, MN, and OR can now see reporting for their students based on their respective state standards.
  • Teachers can now assign multiple lessons when creating an assignment.
• Student Experience Updates
  • A specific error message now shows when a read-aloud exercise fails, either due to the microphone not working or if the system did not process the recording.
  • Students are now able to scroll between worlds they have unlocked.
• Update to Class Creation Process
  • The process for teachers to create classes has been revamped for a more intuitive workflow. Teachers can now find and select an existing school while creating a class, rather than having to create a new school. This update will save teachers time and effort.

Star Assessments

• Star Early Literacy Spanish – Literacy Classification & Cut Score Updates
• The literacy classifications and cut scores for Star Early Literacy Spanish were updated. The updates are based on refinement of literacy definitions, realignment of skills, and additional testing data.
• Literacy Classifications are now defined by 3 categories instead of 5.
• Emergent Reader (200 – 758)
• Transitional Reader (759 – 822)
• Probable Reader (823 – 1100)
• To validate the updated cut scores, assessment data from the 2022-2023 school year was used.
• Removal of All Time Date Option – Star & Consolidated Reports
• The All Time date option will no longer be available in the date range picker for the following Star and Consolidated reports:
• Instructional Planning – Class Report
• Star Goal History Report
• Star Student Progress Monitoring Report
• Star Annual Progress Report
• Star Test Record Report
• Star State Performance, Student Report
• Star State Performance, Class Report
• Star Diagnostic Report
• Star Test Activity Report
• Star Summary Report
• Star Student Performance Record Report
• Skills Status Report
• Student Mastery Record Report
• Star Parent Report
• Consolidated Progress Report
• Consolidated Ranking Report
• Consolidated Status Report
• Consolidated Implementation Status Report
• Consolidated Assessment Proficiency Report
• Consolidated State Performance Report
• Consolidated Summary Report
• Consolidated School-to-Home Report
• This change is being made to enhance report performance and efficiency.
• While All Time is no longer an option, you will be able to access data from the previous three years.
• Historical Extracts will continue to provide historical data beyond the three-year limitation.
• Practice reports that use All Time are not affected by this update.
• Star CBM Reading & Lectura: Passage Oral Reading Updates
• Went live on 7/19/24
• Star CBM Reading updates:
• Normed Non-fiction passages added to the Passage Oral Reading measure in grades 4-6.
• Star CBM Lectura updates:
• Pasajes para lectura en vos alta (Passage Oral Reading) measure normed for grade 5
• Grade 5 scores for Pasajes para lectura en vos alta now has benchmarks
• Updated Star Norms for back to school 2024-2025
• New norms
• Star Reading, Star Math, and Star Early Literacy (English only).
• The updated norms will be applied on the first day of the school year as defined on your Renaissance site.
• SAEBRS – Administrator Report
• The Administrator Report will provide an overview of how many students have completed a SAEBRS assessment (from teachers) and mySAEBRS assessment (from the students themselves). Additionally, educators can drill down into data based on a specific school, grade, or student.
• By default, District Level Administrators and District Staff have access to the Administrator Report.
• School Level Administrators, School Staff, and teachers will not have access to the report unless they have been granted the permission “View District Reports and Dashboards.”

Renaissance Next for Teachers

• The RGP Home Page for eligible teachers updated to the Renaissance Next experience for teachers
• Help page with the details

Renaissance Analytics

• Renaissance Next for Teachers Access via Renaissance Analytics
  • As of July 29, administrators with eligible schools can now access the Renaissance Next teacher view via Renaissance Analytics. This new feature allows seamless navigation between Renaissance Next for Teachers and Renaissance Analytics.
  • In Renaissance Next for Teachers, administrators will have the same views, experiences, and data access as their teachers, ensuring a unified and comprehensive understanding of the platform.
  • Note: Freckle does not support certain administrative functions, so some links are greyed out for admins in Renaissance Next for Teachers.
  • Help article: How Administrators Can Support Teachers Using Renaissance Next
• New Home page and more
  • Renaissance Analytics now includes a new Home page dashboard with an overview of your data and tips for getting the most out of your products. Administrators can choose to make this their new default Home page.
  • All Renaissance Analytics pages now have links to your Renaissance products and reports, either from a navigation bar on the left or via the apps icon in the header.
  • Help File: Renaissance Analytics Home page

Freckle

• Additional Skills Released for ELA Writing Domain 3
  • We've released 45 new skills for English Language Arts Skills Practice
  • Our new offerings provide students with the opportunity to practice narrative writing skills for grades 2-6. These new skills, derived from the Common Core's Writing Anchor Standard 3, are available in all Freckle ELA Systems.
  • These narrative writing skills focus on crafting compelling stories and cohesive plot structures, as well as employing effective narrative techniques, like dialogue and descriptive language.
  • Our latest ELA offerings present students with various question types. Students can select sentences in context and choose the most appropriate additions to a narrative text.
• ELA Focus Skills Practice
  • With ELA Focus Skills Practice, customers with a Freckle ELA and Star Reading connection will now have access to a differentiated Focus Skills pathway for their students that allows them to practice the most critical building blocks in ELA leading up through their rostered grade level.
  • Help File: How do students practice Focus Skills in Math and ELA?

Clever Self-Serve

• Ability to Add/Edit District & School IDs
  • Sharing Renaissance assessment data with your state, third-party vendors or other data sharing agreements (DSA) are now supported.

Star Assessments

• Star Phonics
  • The "Support" menu has been renamed Resources.
  • The Practice Platform can now be accessed within Star Phonics via the Resources drop-down menu eliminating the need for a separate login.

Star Assessments

• mySAEBRS – Now available in Spanish
  • Students now have an option to select whether to take a mySAEBRS assessment in English or Spanish.
• Star Data Insights – Unscreened Students
  • In addition to seeing the number of students who have tested or are eligible for testing, educators can now see the number of students who have not been tested.
  • Select the "unscreened students" link in the row for a school or grade to see a list of unscreened students.

myON

• myON v4.17.3 released on 5/2/24
  • Added C1 & C2 CEFR levels to the Library Browse page drop-down options
  • Renamed “TCRWP Collection” to “A-Z Bookshelf”
  • Updated tagline on the Home page back to the preferred English translation (China only)
  • Resolved issue in Account Books where ‘Release date’ filter was not overriding the other filters

Star Assessments

• Data Insights – Update to School & Grade Picker
  • Updates have been made to the School and Grade picker allowing educators to select specific schools or grades to be included in the table of results.
• Accommodations Practice Test
  • Students taking a Star Reading or Star Math test and have at least one of the following Accommodations Preferences active, will have an opportunity to take a short sample test:
    • Accommodations Toolbar: Response Masking, Calculator, Color Contrast, Font Size/Zoom, Highlighter, Line Reader
    • Assistive Technology: Screen Reader, Other
  • This allows them to interact with the accessibility tools before they are presented with actual test questions.
  • The sample test is not graded, and a student is not required to “pass” the sample in order to take the actual test. After the sample test is over, the student can choose to either proceed to the actual test or log out.
• Chromebook Star Assessment App Retirement
  • Google is deprecating older Chromebook App technology at the end of 2024, which will affect the LockDown Browser for Star assessments on Chromebooks. A new Chromebook extension for Star Assessments is now available for download. Educators will need to replace their current Chromebook Kiosk Mode App with a new Chromebook Extension by December 31, 2024.
  • Dowload the new Chromebook Extension
  • See this help page for steps and screenshots.
• Star Test Activity Report
  • "Show Non-participation Status" is now an option. When selected, a Non-participation Status column is added to the report and lists the reason the test was not taken.
  • A new footnote will be added and shown when Show Non-participation Status is selected

Renaissance Analytics

• School Leader Visibility Settings
  • District administrator users have access to a new School Leader Visibility tab under Settings, with options for managing school leader/administrator access to the District Profile and the Our Schools dashboards. District administrators may select to hide the District Profile from school admins and can limit school admins to seeing just their own schools on the Our Students dashboard. Any changes that you make can take up to 24 hours to take effect.
    • The District Profile, if shown, displays data in tiles allowing users to compare overall district performance across subgroups and see data over time. It can also show the highest and lowest 5 performing schools for each metric. By default, school leaders/administrators can see the District Profile.
    • The Our Schools dashboard allows users to quickly compare progress across schools. By default, school leaders/administrators can see data for all schools. Changing this setting removes any schools not assigned to the school leader in RGP User Settings.
  • Note: Even if School Leaders are allowed to see aggregated data, they can only see student-level data for the schools assigned to them, not for other schools.

Star Assessments

• Star Screening Report: Custom Date Range picker
  • A Custom Date Range picker was added allowing educators to view the most recent test for students within a timeframe that is outside of their school screening windows.
• State Standards Mastery – Class Report: Custom Date Range Picker
  • A Custom date range picker was added to the State Standards Mastery – Class Report. This allows educators to look back within the school year or pinpoint a specific test to track performance on state standards.

Lalilo

• Teachers with premium accounts in Arizona, Nebraska, and North Dakota can now see reporting for their students based on their respective state standards. Reporting is retroactive, so teachers can see any prior activity reported in the standards section of an individual student's page.
  • Arizona English Language Arts Standards
  • Nebraska’s College and Career Ready Standards for ELA
  • North Dakota English Language Arts Standards
• Lalilo and Star Integration & Other Updates
  • Star Reading scores can now be used for placement within the Lalilo curriculum
    • Note that students will still need to do the Introductory Activity (previously known as the Placement test), the Star score simply makes the introductory activity more targeted to their specific level.
  • The Placement Test report is being replaced with a Progress Report.
    • Teachers will be able to see where the students started and their last validated lesson in Lalilo
    • For accounts with Star Early Literacy or Star Reading, the most recent Star score is displayed under a new column, Latest Star Test, even if the Star score has not been used for placement
  • Instances of Placement Test will be replaced with Introductory Activity
  • Star scores will now be active for 4 months, instead of 2 months

myON

• myON v4.17.2 released on 3/14/24
  • Added Irish as an available book language
  • Resolved issue in Projects where adding a book to existing task removed old books
  • Preventing concurrent login by default
  • Updated AU localization so that the displayed grade level matches Renaissance
  • Resolved issue in Project creation where the number of books for task completion always reverted to ‘all’
  • Resolved issue in Projects where adding highlighting, then deleting, then adding new did not save
  • Resolved issue in Projects where removing a reading task, then adding a new one prior to save, removed the new one

Star Assessments

• Star Student Report
  • Educations now have an option to select "Show Useful Terms to Know" to include a list of terms and their definitions on the report
  • Algebra and Geometry can now be selected as Assessment Types

Lalilo

• New Assignment Report by Student
  • Teachers can now see a details page for each student with the list of the latest assignments, categorized based on their success on each assignment
• Assignment Creation Revamp
  • Following an update to the student assignment creation flow, further improvements have been made.
    • Less steps when creating an assignment (class or student assignment, numerous lessons)
    • A redesigned picker to allow for manual lesson browsing while keeping the search bar visible!
    • Teachers can generate assignments right from the snapshot to focus on
  • Student Surveys
    • Students will now be presented with a short survey between activities, at most once per day. Our goals are to better understand what drives students' engagement and measure the impact that our changes have made on engagement.

Star Assessments

• Delete Goal Option in Star CBM
  • Delete Goal option added to the Student Details page. If selected, the goal will be completely removed.
  • No assessments will be affected when deleting a goal.
  • This feature is available for both Star CBM English and Star CBM Lectura.

Lalilo

• Assignment Report Updated
  • Students are categorized based on their proficiency levels, simplifying the process of providing targeted assistance, which allows teachers to instantly identify if students are facing difficulties with an assignment.
  • The clarity of assignment statuses is improved, making it more straightforward for teachers to determine which assignments are currently in progress.