PowerSchool Unified Classroom vs. Renaissance Star Assessments

In the classroom it is very well suited. For classroom teachers, and for school systems in general. It is appropriate in this capacity because it creates a streamlined sense of communication for all stakeholders: teachers, parents, students, and administration. It makes parent meetings very easy, it makes interventions for students easy, and it helps administration keep tabs on overall progress

Incentivized

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.

• Hand in/Hand Out Assignments
• Standards Based Assessments

Incentivized

• Renaissance Star Assessments gives me a look at each student as an overall reader.
• Renaissance Star Assessments shows me the areas of which my students are struggling.
• Renaissance Star Assessments is linked with Nearpod, so I can assign lessons based on what each student needs.
• Star CBM helps me see whether my students' fluency is improving or not.

Incentivized

• The user interface is a little blocky and not entirely user-friendly.
• It does take more training than we'd like with new staff.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

Star Assessments and Renaissance is the best educational products at this time. They are found worldwide, easy to use and informational for districts teachers and families. Information will follow a student if they change districts and give previous information to new districts and teachers

Incentivized

I love the idea that it takes only a short period of time for the students to be able to take the quizzes and obtain results. I appreciative how quickly the teacher has plans on implementation in her/his hands as soon as the class has completed the quiz.

It’s wonderful

I absolutely love this program

Incentivized

They are very responsive to the issues that we have and follow through with their assistance. Having a live assist that is available when our teachers need it is essential too. They also seem to listen to suggestions on making improvements and have been transparent with us when renovations are done.

Incentivized

I have been very happy with the support. By phone or email I have found the support very good and they get back to me quickly. This survey however is wa6 overdone, expecting me to come up with 50 words on each question. It becomes very repetitive and very laborious.

I just feel this way.

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.

I have used markbook and gradebook. Each system had good features that were slightly different but the fact that this one is web based and accessible makes it the best of the 3 I have used. The learning curve to using the program is similar to the other 2 and overall has allowed me to save time reporting to students and parents.

Incentivized

Renaissance Star Math Assessment provided a proven data collection tool. This was also being used at the lower grades in our district, so it made sense to continue with its use to provide a more reliable and accurate picture of our students entering the middle school. The continuation of the data trail should continue to help their overall growth.

Incentivized

Great overall program with lots of advice in implementation

Incentivized

• Positive impact- i don't know how much it costs but every teacher spends probably 1-4 hours on powerschool every week but it streamlines communication

Incentivized

• 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.