The STAR test I referred to is formally called the "CST" test but is usually referred to as the STAR test. It has nothing to do with the STAR test that is part of AR.
At my school, we are told to do AR and have to give the reading inventory test that goes with it 3 times a year (STAR). I don't think that this test shows the real reading level of students. The only value I see in it is as a ranking of students in your class -- showing how they did on one test at one time. I don't see much value in that, either. The ranking was only "fairly" accurate. I didn't think the reading levels were accurate. As far as AR, I didn't particularly like it because the questions are at such a low level and our students were told they couldn't look back at the text to find the answers. I tried passing some of the tests on non-fiction materials (one on trucks, for instance) and couldn't pass it because the questions were so technical and I didn't have the schema for it. I also thought many of the fiction questions were awful too. These multiple-choice questions are not, and cannot be by the very nature of the type of question, "thick" questions. The school regulations loosed up considerably this year. However, one advantage to AR is that our school/district has a license and we allowed the children to take the tests at home. Many parents really bought into it because this was something that they could easily do at home. My kids really read a lot of books this year -- far more than in the past. I didn't use prizes, incentives, etc. We have over 90,000 tests on AR so almost every book is AR. (Before we had that many quizzes it was a problem because too many students only wanted to read AR books and many great books in our library went unread -- except by me when I read them aloud to students). Many kids got turned on to reading. My second graders found a series they liked (Henry and Mudge, for example) and wanted to read every single Henry and Mudge book in the series. Then they expanded to others. They began comparing one book to another and several students wrote their own Henry and Mudge stories. We did author studies on Rylant in class. The kids began recommending the books to others and I had a lot of kids that said, "I never knew reading could be so much fun." Once one child read a great book, he/she would tell others about it and there would be a waiting list for that book with kids begging the reader to hurry up because they wanted to read it too. AR was not considered as part of their reading grades. We were encouraged to set goals per trimester for each student. Students were allowed to retake a test if they didn't pass it. I had one little girl who at the beginning of second grade was reading 28 WPM at mid-first grade level, who couldn't read multi-syllable words, had trouble with blends, etc. who steadily progressed through the year. Her personal incentive: she wanted to take AR tests. By the end of the year, with considerably effort on her part, her parents, and me, her reading speed increased to over 70 WPM and she was able to read Magic Tree House books. She was so excited. Who knows why taking AR tests was her motivation? It certainly wasn't anything I set up. I'm not a strong advocate for AR, but many of my students read lots of books. They became experts at recommending books to others and they self-selected books often reading many by the same author. If used properly, it can encourage young students to read. One first grade class of 20 students in our school read over 2,000 books between April and June as documented by AR tests which students passed by at least 80%. Much of that reading was done at home. Upper grade teachers at our school have made many of the comments that have been made in discussions about AR. ----- Original Message ----- From: Beverlee Paul Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 12:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Students who don't learn to read Okay, now I have a serious inquiry. We have managed to stay out of the way of good old AR for many years, but "acquired" it with our new principal 3 years ago. On a national norm-referenced test (which we no longer give), how would you say the correlation would be between that and the STAR test? The teachers in my school say that the STAR is wildly inaccurate. From your experience (all of you), what would you say about the reliability and validity of the STAR? The students are not taking a norm-referenced test. They are taking the STAR test. The figures I provided are the % of students who scored below 73% on the tests. The students are graded on the % correct. As our district has told us in the past, every student could (one administrator said should) score 90%. _________________________________________________________________ http://liveearth.msn.com _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
