Natick Middle School math teachers use a variety of assessments to determine students' mastery of standards.

Benchmark Assessments:

    • They are not designed to give grade level designations or assess, for example, student reading level, or appropriate grade.

    • We do both the Renaissance Star Math assessment (3- 4 times a year) and common district benchmark assessments (2-4 times a year depending on the grade)

    • Our common assessments are designed to measure what we as a district taught, and how successful the students were in mastering the standards taught. What did we teach and did they learn it?

Summative assessments: given every 4 to 9 weeks to monitor student proficiency and provide teachers with information for re-teaching, improving instruction, and following- up with students.

    • Currently in the Natick Public Schools, some of our interim assessments are common and some are not. Summative assessments may include quizzes and tests.

Formative assessments: Informal checks for student understanding used by individual teachers to continuously fine-tune instruction and follow up with students who are confused (these were the focus of the classic 1998 Kappan article, “Inside the Black Box,” by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam).

    • Currently in the Natick Public Schools, some of our formative assessments are common, but most are not. These are at teacher discretion.

    • The primary purpose of formative assessments is to INFORM the teacher’s instruction and to inform the teacher and student of the progress being made towards a standard.

    • Formative assessments can be used on a daily basis in order for the teacher to ensure that students understand a concept or can perform a skill, before the class or individual students move on to more complex standards.

Assessment Tools

Renaissance Star Math Assessment

Renaissance Star Math Assessments are computer adaptive tests that measure student growth and achievement. Each individual assessment adapts to the right difficulty level for each child throughout the test to provide a highly accurate prediction of your child’s ability in math. Therefore, the Star Math assessments can take anywhere between 25-40 minutes depending on each individual child.

Renaissance results are used for one or more of the following reasons:

● Measuring your child's general achievement in math

● Identifying what skills he or she is ready to learn; including those skills that require intervention and/ or extension

● Helping plan instructional support activities as a part of daily instruction and/or Response to Intervention (RTI)

● Tracking his or her progress toward academic targets

● Estimating his or her proficiency on state tests

● Estimating his or her mastery of standards


Renaissance is used for math placement. Scores are released through Powerschool.

For every Renaissance STAR Reading or Math assessment, your child receives a scaled score (SS), which is calculated based on the difficulty of the questions and the number of correct answers. Scaled scores are useful for comparing your child’s performance over time and across grades. STAR Reading and STAR Math scaled scores range from 0–1400.


Your child will also receive a percentile rank each time they complete a Renaissance STAR assessment. Percentile Rank (PR) is a norm-referenced score that provides a measure of your student’s math or reading ability compared to other students in the same grade nationally. The percentile rank score, which ranges from 1 to 99, indicates the percentage of other students nationally who obtained scores equal to or lower than the score of a particular student. For example, a student with a percentile rank score of 85 performed as well as or better than 85 percent of other students in the same grade.

Edulastic

Edulastic is an online assessment tool that includes traditional questions like multiple choice, short answer, essay but also utilizes technology-enhanced items like drag and drop, multiple select, constructed response. etc. Edulastic is similar to what students may see for when taking online MCAS assessments. Edulastic is used district wide and provides teachers with real time data to make instructional decisions.