The Star Biliteracy Report is specifically designed to evaluate reading performance of bilingual students who are learning in both English and Spanish. It acknowledges that bilingual students have unique learning patterns that differ from monolingual students by using a "bilingual lens" to view their performance. The report combines data from both Star Reading (English) and Star Lectura (Spanish) assessments.
Instead of using standard monolingual benchmarks, it uses a specialized scale created specifically for bilingual learners, recognizing their distinct learning journey. This approach provides a more accurate and fair assessment of bilingual students' reading abilities by considering their unique language learning context rather than measuring them against monolingual standards.
How do I get to this page?
- Log in to Renaissance.
- On the Home page:
- Renaissance Next: Select Star in the left-hand sidebar; then select Star Early Literacy, Star Math, Star Reading, or Star Spanish—in the menu that opens, select Record Book.
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Legacy Mode: Select Star Early Literacy, Star Math, Star Reading, or Star Spanish; then select Record Book.
- In the Star Record Book, select View Reports at the top of the page, then select Star Biliteracy Report.
In Legacy Mode, the Star Biliteracy Report link can also be found by selecting Reports on the Home page:
Who can do this with default user permissions?
District Level Administrators, District Staff, School Level Administrators, School Staff, Teachers
- This report can only be run for a single class at a time.
- Students need to have a language set in order to appear in this report (see below).
- You can change the language the report is created in using the English | Español toggle at the top of the page.
Special instructions for first-time users
Before you run the report the first time, you need to set up language allocations and home languages for at least one class. If you have not set them up yet, you will see this "Bienvenidos/Welcome" message when you open the Star Biliteracy Report.
- Use the School and Class drop-down lists to choose which students to set the report up for.
- District administrators and district staff can select any school and class in the district.
- School administrators and school staff can select any class in any school they are assigned to.
- Teachers can select any of their own classes.
- If you only have access to a single school or class, you will not need to make a selection.
- Select Set up Report.
- In the pop-up window, select the language program being used for the students in the chosen class:
- Dual language two way (Speakers of English and Spanish developing both languages in conjunction): Spanish speakers and English speakers are taught together in both languages. Use the drop-down list to choose the percentage of Spanish versus English instruction in your classroom; for example, 90/10 means 90% of the instruction is given in Spanish, while 10% is given in English.
- Dual language one way (Mainly Spanish-dominant speakers developing English and Spanish): Spanish speakers are taught separately in both Spanish and English. Use the drop-down list to choose the percentage of Spanish versus English instruction in your classroom (such as 90/10 if 90% of the instruction is in Spanish).
- Transitional bilingual: Instruction is given in both languages initially, with more and more of the instruction being in English over time.
- Other: If none of the options describe your program, select Other, then enter a brief description of your program type.
You can change this setting after the report has been run for a class by using the Program type link at the bottom of the Class View page.
- Select Next.
- In the next window, select the home language for each student in the class (English or Spanish). You can use the "multi-select" links above the list to select the same language for all students at once (and then change individual students afterwards).
Students without a home language set will not appear on the Star Biliteracy Report.
- Select Save.
You will need to set up home languages for students in your other classes to run the report for them; see below.
- On the Star Biliteracy Report page, use the School and Class drop-down lists to choose which students to include in the report.
- District administrators and district staff can select any school and class in the district.
- School administrators and school staff can select any class in any school they are assigned to.
- Teachers can select any of their own classes.
- If you only have access to a single school or class, you will not need to make a selection.
- Use the Student Home Language drop-down list to choose which students to include on the report: you can Show All students regardless of their home language or only show those whose home language is Spanish or English.
If there are students in the class who do not have their home language set, you will be able to set them after updating the report—see below.
- Use the Time Frame drop-down list to choose what segment of the school year you want to see data for. Beginning of School Year covers the first third of your school year, Middle of the School Year is the second third, and End of School Year is the final third.
- After making your choices, select Update Report.
- The report updates; however, before viewing the report, choose how to compare student performance:
- Performance compared to students in dual-language programs nationally: Biliteracy norms are available for grades 2–6. Students outside those grades or who have not taken a Star Reading and Star Lectura assessment will not be included on the chart, but they will be included in the table.
- Performance compared to all students who took Star Lectura and Star Reading nationally: Star Lectura norms are available in grades 1–8 and Star Reading norms are available in grades K–12. Students outside those grades or who have not taken a Star Reading and Star Lectura assessment will not be included on the chart, but they will be included in the table.
- Star Reading Percentile Ranks are on the vertical axis, Star Lectura Percentile Ranks are on the horizontal.
- The axes are color-coded, representing the district benchmark categories.
- Blue icons
are for students whose home language is English; magenta icons
are for students whose home language is Spanish. Students' initials are shown underneath their respective icons.
- Lines indicating the minimum proficiency levels extend from the axes. In the example above, At/Above Benchmark (40 PR) is the minimum proficiency level for both Star Reading and Star Lectura.
- If a student took more than one assessment on the same day, only the most recent assessment from that day will be shown.
- Click and drag with the mouse to select a section of the chart and zoom in on it. To reset the view, select Reset Zoom in the upper-right corner.
- Hover on a student's icon to see dashed lines extending to both axes, making it easier to see where they fall.
- Click on a student's icon to open a pop-up window with information about their most recent Star Lectura and Star Reading assessments. Select View all Scores this School Year in the pop-up window to go to the student view for that student.
Below the chart is the same information set in tabular form. Each student's data is shown: their home language, the date of their most recent Star Lectura and Star Reading assessments, the Percentile Rank (PR) and Scaled Score (SS) from those assessments, and what benchmark category their PR placed them in.
Although there are 10 students in this example class, only 6 of them appear in the chart. If a student wasn't included on the chart, the reason why is listed in place of scores:- Not yet assessed: The student hasn't taken both a Star Reading and a Star Lectura assessment in the selected time frame. If the selected time frame is the current one, the student can still take an assessment and be included on this report; if the selected time frame is a past time frame, the student will not appear on the report.
- Dual-language benchmarks are not available for this student's grade level: This message appears if there are no norms for the student's grade (based on the comparison option you chose earlier).
- Home language not set for this student: Students need to have a home language set (English or Spanish) before they will be included on the report. If the student is in a class other than the one used for the initial setup for this report, they can still have a home language set by selecting Add Home Language in the row for the student.
- To see more detailed information about a student, select their name in the Student column; this will open the student view.
- Select Print or Save above the chart to create a PDF file which you can print or save, or select Download Data to create a .csv file which can be viewed in a spreadsheet program.
- If you print or save the report while the chart is showing, we recommend doing so in portrait mode.
- The chart is not included in the .csv file.
setting students' home language
Students need to have a home language set in order to appear on the Star Biliteracy report. There are two opportunities to do this:
- When initially setting up the report: During the initial report setup, one class is selected and the home languages for the students in that class are chosen at that time (as detailed in the "Special instructions for first-time users" above).
- Student view: The student view shows you information for a specific student and gives you a chance to edit their home language.
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After generating the report: Once a report has been generated for a class, you can add or edit the home language for students in the class by selecting either Home Language above the table or Add Home Language in the row for any student that doesn't have a home language set.
In the next window, select the home language for each student in the class (English or Spanish). You can use the "multi-select" links above the list to select the same language for all students at once (and then change individual students afterwards).After setting the home languages for students, select Save.