Creating a Historical Extract

The historical extract gives you access to test data from previous school years for Star Early Literacy, Star Math, and Star Reading. The data is extracted into a tab-delimited text (.txt) file, which you can open in a spreadsheet program or a plain-text editor. Historical extracts are useful for planning for a new school year (based on where students ended the previous year), comparing Star's prediction of students' performance on state tests with their actual test results, and identifying trends in performance and growth for students or teachers.

The procedure for creating a historical extract starts on the Historical Extract page. There are two ways to reach that page (use whichever method you prefer, then go to step 1):

1. Choose from the following options:
   
   

   Select Schools

   Use the drop-down list to choose which school's data to include in the extract.

   • School level administrators can only create an extract for their own school.

   • District level administrators and district staff can choose All Schools to create an extract for all schools in the district, or they can click Multiple Schools to choose multiple schools from a checklist (check the schools you want to include, then click Save Selection).

   Select School Years

   Use this drop-down list to choose which year's data you want to include in the extract.

   Click Multiple Years to include data from more than one school year (check the years you want to include, then click Save Selection).

   Product

   Check the box next to each product you want a historical extract for. Each product will have its own extract made; for example, if you check Star Math and Star Reading, you will get two data files.

   Choosing a program will include data from both the Enterprise and non-Enterprise (Progress Monitoring) versions of the program if the selected school(s) use both.

   Benchmark

   Choose a benchmark to compare students' test scores against: the school benchmark, the district benchmark, or the state benchmark (if available).

   Date for Projected Score

   Enter the date that you want to predict the projected Scaled Score for in the historical extract. The default date is the last day of the school year, but you can change it to another (such as the day of the state test, or the actual last day of school).

2. After you make your selections, click Generate Extract .
3. Below the table of options is a list of historical extracts created in the last five days .
   
   
   • "In queue" means the extract is still being created.
     
     If your extract has been in the queue for a while, you can click Refresh to force the list of extracts to update.
   • "Completed" means the extract is ready. There will be a link to the right of "Completed" that has the date the extract was created and the options chosen (followed by the file size of the extract). Click the link to save or open the extract.
   • "No Data Found" means that there was no historical data that matched the options you have chosen. Choose different options and click Generate Extract again.
   • "Failed" means that there was a technical problem during the creation of the historical extract. Make sure you have the same options chosen and click Generate Extract again. If you experience multiple failures, please contact Renaissance Learning.
4. Click Done when you are finished.

The extract you created will be accessible on this page for the next five days, after which it will be automatically removed. You will see an alert on the Home page for any extracts that are complete and have not been automatically removed yet, or extracts that have failed. You can dismiss these reminders like any other by clicking Dismiss.