McGraw-Hill Connect is an e-learning platform offered by McGraw-Hill Education. Features include course and assignment creation, grading, learning aides, e-books, and student portals.
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Renaissance Star Assessments
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Star Assessments are a suite of assessments for reading, math, and early literacy, in both English and Spanish, boasting users among over 30,000 schools. Star Assessments helps educators to gain accurate insights into student learning, growth, and achievement—so they can help all learners reach their full potential. The full Star Assessment suite includes the computer-adaptive Star Reading (K–12), Star Math (K–12), and Star Early Literacy (pre-K–3) assessments; a formative assessment tool, Star…
Content is pretty good, and site is good as standalone tool, but it does not integrate will with any LMS. Grade pass back does not work with Google Classroom or Skyward (unsure about Power School or others) SSO works with Clever, but not Google, so students always have to go through Clever and cannot go directly from Google Classroom to an assignment, even if you posted to Google Classroom through the Connect portal. Problem sets are robust, but difficult to edit and assessments are designed to be web based. Formatting is poor when trying to print assessments that were created online.
Renaissance Star Assessments are great for students who already know English and know how to use a device, especially a tablet. The children can listen to the question, choose an answer, then move on to the next question. These assessments are less appropriate for students learning English as a second language. Since the questions are in English, and most students primarily speak another language, they do not understand the questions and get many of them wrong. As a result, they score low and it appears as if the child has not been learning when in fact the low score is due to a language barrier. I think there should also be some type of block to choosing an answer until after the question is presented because some children like to press answers before the question is finished and then try to move on. I think having the answers be unclickable before the question is finished would be a benefit for the children to pay more attention to the question.
Integration with Canvas is seamless and easy to use.
Assignment completion, for students, is straightforward and easy to use.
The SmartBook allows students to read as they are tested with questions and this helps them learn the material easily without having first trying to read, memorize a chapter and then answer questions.
McGraw-Hill Connect could do a better job of staying current and making sure all of its videos and references to real-scenarios are up to date.
It can do a better job of immediate explanation or advice when an answer is incorrect.
It can improve upon its ability to autosave assignments. If an internet connection gets buggy and kicks the user out of the system, sometimes the assignment progress will be lost. This is because to save the assignment, it takes you out of the assignment and doesn't just autosave.
The graphs for each subject are not consistently the same. (ie. some graphs are by 5s and some are by 50s.) It's very confusing to read them.
The questions are not rigorous enough for state standards.
Different reports will show data that does not align. If 'state' is chosen, then all reports should show the same data. The Parent Report will show the child in 'green', but every sub-skill is in 'red'. That is super confusing for parents and teachers.
All reports should be based on the same score, but they are not. It is like comparing apples to oranges on the same child.
I feel that is has been a very useful resource for data management in our school. It has helped the students and teachers recognize what needs to be addressed and what they already know so far that school year. I feel that this has been extremely helpful on many different levels.
The product will do a majority of what they claim. Your experience will vary depending on how much you love or hate the implementation. The tools are there, but there is a learning curve as people get accommodated to how interaction is expected to be conducted (as opposed to more personal means).
It is very user friendly and intuitive. I have had minimal training on the system and was able to access many of the features. I was able to easily create student accounts and set up testing for our students. I was able to find appropriate reports that provide the right data for our team and our parents.
Personally, I did not encounter McGraw-Hill support. However, I worked with colleagues who needed support and were able to receive in a timely manner. Overall, McGraw Hill Connect is user-friendly (at least from teacher interface) and easy to navigate, which minimizes the need to reach out for support. The help button is useful and provides plenty of immediate support.
After using the product for multiple years, I am very pleased with the assessment administration and report options. I use STAR Assessment data regularly and review the different reports to guide instruction. There are many different report options to help meet the needs of the teacher and student. STAR Assessments are a valuable assessment tool for the classroom
When presenters show us how to use the program they need to have a full class size of data. During training, there were only 5 or 6 sample students. Classes are more like 25 and that makes the training more realistic to have similar data to what we will use.
Much of our lecture material comes from McGraw-Hill, so it was an opportunity to marry the learning material to a collaborative system that can make the experience more portable and potentially more affordable for our students. The workings are managed off-site so we do not need to care for it on a daily basis.
Fast ForWord is a program that allows students to play games while learning and practicing reading skills. I liked this program at first, because it was fun for the students and they loved completing new levels. After time, many of the students lost their motivation. They began to complain about having to get onto Fast ForWord. As they completed a level, the students' scores would increase showing that the students were improving in some areas of reading. Renaissance Star Assessments takes anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to take. We give it once every 6 to 9 weeks, and the results are very specific. They are not based on a level the students completed in a game.
Wasted valuable time trying to figure out the "eBook."
Did not receive good value for the money spent.
Did not feel as though the company was interested in keeping me satisfied as a customer, or like their customer service was actually interested in solving any problems.
It has positively impacted student time to learn by reducing testing times and allowing more time for instruction
The reduced testing time also positively impacted our schools by freeing the computer labs and making the planning and creation of testing schedules easier. This has allowed more computer lab use for education and learning.
It has negatively impacted the time and effort required by support staff, administrators, and some teachers by requiring more time spent on looking up results or going to multiple spots and manually combining results because a larger group couldn't easily be made.
Another negative impact on our district is that it has also taxed those few educators with more technical ability and data knowledge moreso than other programs. The need to create/summarize/write programs to deal with full, raw data export files since the smaller, more specific reports and summaries are not downloadable into a format that can be manipulated easily (pdf only, not csv exports), and to constantly back up data exports and to have to search through them when the State wants results on past students etc.
