Renaissance myON® News, Powered by News-O-Matic vs. Renaissance Star Assessments

I think this is a great tool for middle school students, as they are starting to become aware of the world around them and topics that are going on in our country and world. In this digital age, students need to learn the difference between "fake news" and unbiased news reports. The interactive features, as well as letting them read articles based off their interests, is perfect for middle school aged children.

Incentivized

Many of my students reach the 852 score and are eligible to take the Star Reading test in the Spring. This is due to the reports telling me which skills to work on and being able to group students according to skill needs. When I need teacher assistance, online meetings with Renaissance support personnel has been available. Renaissance always welcomes teacher feedback to improve their products. The company has acquired many classroom tools in the last years and connected them fir ease of teacher use, which saves classroom time.

Incentivized

• A variety of article
• 3 different Lexile levels
• English and Spanish

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

• Maybe if they added a local or state feature...

• 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

I give it this rating because it is an essential program in our school. We set up reading groups throug( the Star assessment. We set goals based on the assessment. Students comfort zones are based on the zpd data in Star. We track students progress through the data found in Star.

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

Renaissance has always had a great online help section with videos and articles. They also have an online community for users to discuss ways to use their products. They have free webinars available to users as well. Most one-on-one learning sessions are done by our instructional facilitators in our county

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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 like myON News more than any other product due to the variety of articles along with providing different Lexile levels. The Comprehension questions are also a great added feature. This is the complete package website, you have everything you need in one site. Students do not have to go to multiple websites to complete the activities.

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

• The kids are up to date on events.

• 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.