Renaissance Star Testing

The Purpose of the STAR Reading Assessment

The STAR Reading Test is designed to gauge the reading comprehension skills and abilities of students in grades 1-12. Find out what this test is, how it's structured and scored, and discover materials and resources that can help you and your students get ready.

The STAR Reading test is used by parents and educators to pinpoint students' strengths and deficiencies in reading and offers specific insight into which areas need improvement. Data from this assessment is also used to inform instruction, gauge students' progress, and identify whether or not students are meeting the expectations of state standards. It is also used to help select students for the Accelerated Reader™ program.

The STAR Reading Assessment

Developed by Renaissance Learning, the STAR Reading assessment is a comprehensive examination that tests the range of students' knowledge of reading and language. Questions on this test cover 46 reading skill areas spread across five domains. Reading domains include analyzing literary text, word skills and knowledge, analyzing argument and evaluating text, comprehension strategies and constructing meaning, and understanding author's craft.

The STAR Reading test utilizes two types of question formats: short comprehension and extended comprehension. Short comprehension questions are based on the theory that vocabulary and comprehension are directly related and uses single-word deletion within a sentence. Extended items also use single-word deletion, but students must read multiple sentences for these types of questions.

Computer-Adaptive Testing

The STAR Reading assessment is what's known as a computer-adaptive test (CAT). This type of assessment tests a student's skills in real-time, constantly adjusting the difficulty depending on a child's earlier responses. For example, for every question that a child answers correctly, the system raises the difficulty level of the next question. Conversely, if a student fails to answer a question correctly, the difficulty is lowered.

Based on the results of this computer-adaptive test, a scaled score (SS) is computed. For this assessment, this is determined by a formula based on the relationship between the number of correct responses as compared to the difficulty of the questions asked. Scaled scores for STAR Reading range from 0-1400.

Reading your Child's Star Reading Report:

• Star Reading Report Definitions

• Star Reading ATOS Level - Lexile Level: Conversion Chart