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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TalentSorter
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
TalentSorter is a cloud-based candidate assessment tool that aims to put ease and accuracy behind hiring decisions. Seeing the data from an applicant's assessment is like putting on X-Ray glasses – it goes beyond their resume so you know if they will thrive and perform in the role, meet company standards and gel with team. The vendor states the results are: - Reduce time sorting resumes - Don't waste time interviewing the wrong people - Increase on-the-job…
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.
We decided to have a few prior employees who were our best, and who remained the longest - ultimately a perfect fit for us, complete the TalentSorter questionaire. Both former employees scored very high and were spot on in meeting our unique criteria that TalentSorter allowed us to set up. That reverse approach really impressed us and also confirmed we had set our criteria correctly to help us sort through applicants. We now require all applicants go through TalentSorter before we will even look at their resume.
TalentSorter took the five character traits that Fortune 500 companies deem most valuable and added many more to help us get a real sense of the individual. It allowed us to gain a much more complete image of the whole person, not just what they want to reveal in their resume, but what is revealed by the questions TalentSorter poses to them and are rated based on the criteria we select as priority.
TalentSorter offers a unique approach to screening applicants using what they call "Predictive Human Analytics" its what we found to be a products that helps find a fit / match between employee and employer values and priorities - with the objective of increasing the quality of the work experience for all. Now that we did the favourite ex-employee test we are confident we will attract the right people and increase retention.
Talent Sorter offers everything in one bucket with a dashboard that ranks best fit candidates, this really assisted our sorting where we focused mainly on the highest ranking candidates. And it captures resumes and ranks intelligence, provides a summary - its a genuine time saver and organizes all applicant material.
As an side we discovered that TalentSorter works like a pre-screen for applicants. The very process eliminates "window shoppers" and the like, who are broadcasting their resume to any and all job postings without consideration.
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 am new to TalentSorter and still discovering all its incredible benefits to our recruitment process, so at this stage in time I have no criticism for improvement.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
TalentSorter has reduced the number of inappropriate applicants. Im able to tailor each job posted.
It scores and ranks applicants with the highest fit to our criteria.
It helps me be better organized and serves as an excellent interview tool, affording me to ask deeper questions and explore where that individual is at and where they are headed.
We are finding better suited individuals, where in the past we may have overlooked them because our sorting was based solely on resume content relevancy, now we are looking at people with the best fit and those who are a fit are happier, more engaged, find passion, pride and are easier to train and can take pride and find passion in their role.
