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

Renaissance Math STAR assessments:

We administer both the Renaissance Star Math assessment (3- 4 times a year). 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.

Benchmark assessments:

These common assessments, which cover multiple units of study, are designed to measure the covered curriculum, and how successful the students were in mastering the standards.

Summative assessments:

These assessments monitor student proficiency and provide teachers with information for re-teaching, improving instruction, and following- up with students.

Formative assessments:

These assessments are informal checks for student understanding used by individual teachers to continuously fine-tune instruction and follow up with students who are confused.

Assessment Tools

Renaissance Star Math Assessment

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

● Placing students in standard or accelerated math classes

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

In addition, 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.

For practice on the Renaissance STAR Math assessment, students may access Freckle through the Renaissance app located in Classlink.

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.