Needs+Assessment


 * __STAR Reading Program__**

//**Overview**// STAR Reading, a Renaissance Learning (RenLearn) product, is a widely used reading comprehension assessment program that is used to determine students' reading levels and monitor growth. According to the RenLearn website, the STAR program offers the ability to: (2010 Renaissance Learning.www.renlearn.com.June 20, 2010.)
 * Assess students' reading levels in less than 10 minutes.
 * Receive accurate, reliable, norm-referenced reading scores including grade equivalents, percentile ranks, and normal curve equivalents.
 * Determine the appropriate level of challenge for each student to personalize practice and individualize instruction.
 * Predict results on high-stakes, standardized tests, including ITBS, CAT, SAT, and TerraNova.
 * Save money by administering assessments throughout the school year at no extra cost.
 * Track growth in student reading achievement longitudinally, facilitating the kind of growth analysis recommended by state and federal organizations

//**Desired Situation**// Teacher are always looking for ways to improve the student reading assessment process in an accurate, valid, and timely manner. Teachers appreciate any help that can be offered when trying to come up with ways to improve student learning and communication between themselves and parents.

Just like teachers, librarians face many endless tasks they must accomplish on a daily basis, and can easily fall behind when interrupted to help meet the needs of others. Although librarians understand it is their job to assist others with questions and/or educational, recreational, and informational, needs, they often feeling that people, teachers in particular, could be inserviced and trained on how to complete some very common and routine tasks using the STAR Reading program that cause unnecessary interruptions.

By librarians creating a professional development inservice on how to operate and and use the STAR Reading program, teachers would learn to: Training teachers to use the STAR Reading program is highly recommended and a necessity if the STAR Reading program is to be used to its full capacity, and allowing teachers to take a more hands-on role in the desired assessment program.
 * Assess students in a timely-manner as part of whole-group instruction.
 * Learn what reports are available in the STAR program and what information/insight the reports offer such as: students reading range, grade equivalent, student growth, etc. Teachers would also learn how student's growth can be tracked annually to offer a bigger picture of student learning and performance.
 * Learn how to run the reports and use these reports to aide in development of student reading comprehension instruction, and parent conferences/communication.

//**Current Situation**// Currently, the librarian is the person teachers depend upon to test students using the STAR Reading program to aid in determining students' reading levels at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year; or when any new students are enrolled in the district. This is most likely due to the lack of time and money to pay a representative from RenLearn to come and train teachers on how to use the STAR Reading program on inservice days. Instead, it has been assumed that the librarian is to use library class time to administer the assessment, which in turn takes away from student learning time. Because teachers know very little about what the full advantanges are of the STAR program, they only use one report which is the Reading Range report. This report lists students' names and their reading level. This is crucial for teachers to know, because they use students' reading levels to set individual reading goals for them each quarter.

This needs to change because although teacher depend on the librarian heavily to gather information on students reading levels, they are the ones who use this information and develop goals and expect students to work towards reaching their goals as part of their reading grade. The librarian is not the person who should be doing all the work such as testing students, running reports, etc. if she is not the one using the information. Teachers are the ones that need the information provided after the assessment is completed to aide them in the decision-making process when determining what steps need to be taken to further student's reading comprehension skills.

It is evident that teachers in the Monroeville Elementary School do not fully understand the capabilities of the STAR Reading Program because they rely on the elementary librarian to assess students by using the STAR program and run the Reading Range report for them as well. Currently, only one out of 16 classroom/reading teachers, other than the Title I Reading teacher, use any reports other than the Reading Range report. Although the Title I Reading teacher uses multiple reports, she always asks for assistance running them.

//**Gap**// Teachers have access to the STAR Reading program but do not use it themselves because they have never had any formal training on how to use the program. They depend upon the librarian to use the program to assess students in their reading comprehension ability, and run the reading range report; which is a required informational piece that aides in determining students' individual reading goals throughout the school year. Teachers could use the STAR Reading program to improve parent communication and aide them in reading compression instruction if they knew how to use it.

It is evident that it is lack of knowledge and skills that is keeping teachers from using the STAR Reading program independently. If teachers were aware and trained on how to all the functions of the program, they would become more knowledgeable and therefore more motivated to use STAR independently.

The goals of this teacher audience instruction includes:
 * //Instructional Goals//**
 * How to assess student using the STAR Reading Program
 * How to run basis reports such as: reading range, diagnostic, summary, parent letter, growth, and a score definition
 * How to run reports with the customized features such as: date taken, selecting individual students, and selecting students by name, gender, and/or race