How to read your child's SFUSD Star Reading and Star Math results

The report has a Star Reading block and a Star Math block. Each has up to three columns, one per testing window: Fall, Winter and Spring. In each column there are two numbers.

• An achievement level from 1 to 4. The district labels these Exceeds, Meets, Approaching and Not Yet Approaching, in that order from 4 down to 1.
• A scaled score. A three- or four-digit number, such as 881. This is the test's own measure of the child's performance, on a scale that runs across grades.

A report printed in February will show Fall and Winter only. Spring is blank because it has not happened yet, not because a result is missing.

The report card's 1 to 4 describes progress toward an end-of-year standard, set by the district. The Star level describes where a scaled score landed relative to the test's own benchmarks for that grade at that time of year. They are produced by different people, from different evidence, against different targets.

So do not translate between them. A child can carry a 2 on a report card standard and a Star Reading level of Meets in the same month, and both are accurate. The report card scale has its own guide.

The scaled score is the one number here that is genuinely comparable from one window to the next, because it sits on a single scale. That makes it useful and also makes it easy to over-read.

Three scores across a year, say 881, 921 and 907, are three snapshots of a test the child took on three particular days. The middle one being highest does not mean the child got worse in spring. If all three sit in the same level, the report is saying the same thing three times. Toward June shows these as separate points with their level and deliberately does not join them with a line, because a line across those three numbers would draw a decline that did not happen.

Parents often ask what score their child “should” have. The District Assessments report does not print an expected range. Where that number appears at all, it is in a teacher's written comment on the report card, in a sentence like “the expected range for Star Reading at this time is between 858 and 901.”

If your card has a comment like that, it is the reference point to use, because it came from the teacher for that grade and that window. If it does not, there is no band to compare against, and no app should invent one.

Keep it beside the report card rather than instead of it. The report card says which standards are still being worked on; the Star report says how a broad reading or math test went on a given day. The first tells you what to practise. The second is a check-in.

And keep the two conversations separate at home. A Star result is a useful thing for a parent and teacher to know, and a much less useful thing for a seven-year-old to be told.