Technical Manual - Renaissance Learning

STAR Early Literacy Enterprise in the ClassroomScore InterpretationUsing the pretest-posttest procedures described in this Technical Manual,educators can use STAR Early Literacy Enterprise Scaled Scores and Sub-domainScores to demonstrate the effectiveness of their reading interventions andmeasure growth in literacy skills over time. The STAR Early Literacy EnterpriseGrowth Report may provide educators with a simple and accurate method formonitoring and documenting gains in literacy skills in accordance with ReadingFirst.Score InterpretationThis section discusses the interpretation of STAR Early Literacy Enterprise ScaledScores, Sub-domain Scores, and Skill Set Scores. It is important to note that eachof these three score types is derived directly from the student’s estimated Raschability—a summary measure of a student’s ability in the universe of literacy skillsthat STAR Early Literacy encompasses. Rasch ability is expressed on a real numberscale. Typical values of Rasch ability in STAR Early Literacy range between –5.0and +5.0. Because of their unfamiliar scale, Rasch ability scores do not appear onSTAR Early Literacy score reports. Instead, scores in more familiar metrics arereported: scaled scores, sub-domain scores, and skill set scores.Scaled Scores are direct but nonlinear conversions of Rasch ability to integerscores ranging between 300 and 900. This conversion to an integer scale was doneto simplify the score scale used in the score reports. Scaled Scores below 310 andabove 890 occur only rarely.Sub-domain Scores are derived by applying the Rasch measurement model toestimate the percentage of items in each STAR Early Literacy Enterprisesub-domain that a student can answer correctly, given the value of his or herRasch ability. Each of the ten Sub-domain Scores—AP, CW, EN, PC, PA, PH, SC, SA,VS and VO—is based on a unique subset of the items comprising the STAR EarlyLiteracy Enterprise item bank. Because they are percentages, Sub-domain Scoresrange from 0 to 100.There is a functional relationship between Sub-domain Scores and Scaled Scores.Within each of the 10 literacy sub-domains, for each possible value of the ScaledScore, there is a corresponding Sub-domain Score value.The relationship of Sub-domain Scores to Scaled Scores is different, however, foreach literacy Sub-domain. This is because the number of items, the average itemdifficulty, and the distribution of item difficulty differ from one Sub-domain toanother.STAR Early LiteracyTechnical Manual143