Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment STAR achievement test ?

Can anyone speak to its accuracy/reliability? I'm still poking around on line for more info, but I'd like to find some sort of chart equating grade level and percentile, if such a thing exists. The school does quite a bit of MAP testing, but doesn't start that until 3rd grade. The Star test is relatively new for them. One of my kids' teachers told me about his grade level result on the Star test for math and I find it hard to believe (too high) - I think the grade level criteria must be too easy.

Anyway, I'd love to hear any opinions about this test.

Not sure about Star- are you talking about a state standardized test? I'm in CA and they give STAR yearly for kids in 2nd and up. It's a grade-level test based on the state standards that are required for that grade level. You get numbers and a category like Advanced, Proficient, Basic etc. You basically get "yes they get it" "they mostly get it" or oh yeah this is not good ;-)

I've never seen a chart that had grade level and percentile like for MAP/NWEA though. Because the test is only given to kids in that grade level, you won't find anything that shows any above level references.

Thanks, CAMom! I'm not really sure what the test is, but it doesn't sound like it's the CA test (we are not in CA). It is something that my ds took last year toward the end of 1st grade and now again at the beginning of 2nd grade, much like the MAP test.

I'm hoping to look at an actual report at our conference in a couple months, but I'm curious in the meantime. His teacher and I are trying to come up with a plan for him for math, and I'm sure he's not more than three grade levels ahead as the test said he was.

Hmmm, it looks like this might be the product:

http://www.renlearn.com/sm/

but unfortunately I don't see any real statistical info available to me. I guess I'll have to wait until the conference.

Thanks, Lauren, I appreciate your info. I recently signed ds up for EPGY, to supplement what's going on at his montessori school - mainly to fill in any holes and then keep him moving forward. In order to make sure holes are filled in, I started him in his actual grade level (2) in EPGY. Unfortunately he doesn't have time to do it every day (or at least he isn't interested in doing it during the times when the computer is available!). So, we haven't gotten to a point where he's learning significant new material, though he can always use the practice on the lower grade material. My guess is that he's probably operating around a beginning of fourth grade level, though the Star test said something in the middle of fifth, which is why I don't think the Star result is accurate.

So, it sounds like Star may be less than accurate in both directions, if it's giving you a grade level that is less than where your ds is at in EPGY. hmmm.... Well, at least the Star test result seems to be motivating my ds's teacher, which makes it very useful to me

At typical X grader, given the same Y-grade-level test. So if it's a second grade test, and comes back as 5th grade, he did as well on second grade-level work as a 5th grader would be expected to, not "he's performing as well as a 5th grader would on 5th grade material," because they didn't test 5th grade material.

I'm not sure what to think about these tests. Two of my kids took similar CA tests (CAT) last spring, and my eight-year-old got all the science and social studies questions right. The percentile section read 99* and had a note that said "Can't create percentile because score is off the scale."

I mean, seriously, my kid was practically the only one who got all the questions right out of thousands of kids? I doubt it. It was weird. The grade level equivalents were 11.9 and 12.8 for the two sections of the test; I also had a hard time believing that you'd have to be a 12th grader to get all the social studies and science questions on a grade 2 level test right!

Val

Yep, that is the explanation of grade level that I've known of. Our school doesn't use STAR math but they use STAR reading test to access kids' reading level. My son had reading tests every month last year. His reading level jumping between 4-8. I didn't take it seriously but I guessed the more reliable number is 6-7.

The website and materials I've found claim that this is an adaptive test, so that it's not testing a 5th grader on 5th grade material but rather starts at lower levels and moves higher until the kid misses a lot. They do claim that the grade level means a kid has mastered a given grade level material. The test is so fast and so quick-and-dirty that I'm not sure the results should be taken too seriously.

My son's school uses these tests, but I don't think they are complete enough or accurate enough to give much guidance.

Here's a great discussion on the STAR reading test from back in March 2010:

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....0133/STAR_Reading_Levels_how_accura.html