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…
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Wonderlic Select
Score 10.0 out of 10
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The Wonderlic Select hiring assessments provide job-specific insights into a candidate's fit for a role. Using Wonderlic's multi-measure assessment approach gives HR teams the most accurate prediction of whether their candidate can do the job, wants to do the job, and how they'll do it. This approach aims to give greater insights into performance and retention.
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.
Gave us GREAT information we wouldn't otherwise have had! This assessment is rooted in real research, holds up over time and helps get a picture of a candidate before they actually show up for work. The information in this assessment may help the employer understand what to expect in a given situation. It may also help them to understand where there may be a mismatch or disconnect for an individual in a given job. What great intel to have going into an employment relationship!
Gives us a Cognitive score. Candidates must be moderate in smarts. Nothing makes up for smarts but smarts isn't all.
Gives us a sense of their Motivation. Recent applicant for a graphic designer job wasn't motivate by jobs requiring "artistic expression." That raised some eyebrows.
And allows the candidate to describe what they like and don't like or their Personality. This is important to me as a supervisor. Allows me to consider whether I would be comfortable supervising a confrontational person, for instance.
The instrument has proven to be very predictive and I've used it for 5 years. For 20 years prior to that, I used the Wonderlic paper-based assessment (cognitive only).
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.
It would be helpful to have more interpretive reports; integrate some of the scales if possible - do scores on one scale have implications for scores on another? Is there any relationship between the scales? I enjoy the anchors showing people with high/low scores may demonstrate certain characteristics; additional elaboration/narrative might be helpful.
Better understanding of the scales and why certain scales matter on some jobs, not others. What does it mean when a score has/does not have bearing on that particular job? Why/Why not?
Maybe include examples of the types of positions for which the scale scores have meaning beyond the particular job in question. This might help with succession planning and development planning.
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.
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.
Very friendly and intuitive user interface. it takes a lot of work to make something simple and effective. I have used many different software products over the years. Most products suffer greatly from "design by committee" and "design by non-users." WonScore Pre-Employment Testing shows no evidence of these pitfalls. I would fight against changes to any other tool.
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.
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.
I migrated with Wonderlic from their paper system to the Wonscore [Pre-Employment Testing (formerly Wonderlic Employee & Customer Surveys)], so I didn't have to do a lot of compare/contrast with other products (not that many on the market all those many years ago).
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.
