nySTART Performance Guidelines and Benchmarks
GUIDELINES/KNOWN ISSUES:
Interactive
Reports ("Guided Analysis")
TOOLS/TIPS:
Benchmarking Form (Excel file) || Benchmarking Timer || nySTART
Tips
Performance Guidelines are intended to provide general estimates for report return times and specific known issues for various report sets. You may want to Bookmark this page (and the nySTART Tips page) and keep a browser window open with these pages in the background while you work in nySTART. This will allow you to refer back to them to determine whether or not to retry a report or use a workaround.
Review your technical settings (see nySTART Tips page) for optimal capacity to run and download reports, consult benchmarks for the reports you plan to run (an Excel form with sample data and data collection format is available above), and use the timer (the link above will open the timer application in a new window) to either track the elapsed time that the report has been running or count down the expected time (based on the posted benchmarks.)
Performance guidelines may be dependent on:
- Business rules, which vary for each report;
- Number of records per page (and/or total pages);
- User type (for example, district-level users can experience longer run-times than school-level users);
- Report drill-through level (for example, depending on the report, any drill-through level—district or school summary, subgroup summary, or student detail—may run longer than the other two);
- Population represented (while some reports are directly proportionate to the population returned, others are not significantly influenced by the number of records);
- Format of the report (default HTML on-screen report versus the .PDF or .XLS file download—if available); and
- File generation process (dynamically generated Verification Reports reports take longer, as a query must first be processed, returned, then formatted in the chosen file type—HTML, PDF or XLS; static reports, on the other hand—Report Cards, Summary Reports and ISRs—have been previously created and are already available for download.)
The default report view on nySTART is HTML (Web/onscreen version.) PDF and Excel (.XLS) file download options may also be available (primarily for Verification Reports.) The two main categories of reports are Assessment Reports (including Interactive Reports, aka "Guided Analysis") and Verification Reports. Each is displayed to the screen somewhat differently:
Interactive Reports ("Guided Analysis")
- Most HTML Interactive Reports ("Guided Analysis") run in less than 30 seconds, but school level summaries may take 1-2 minutes.
For questions about nySTART reports or data, contact your Level 1 Big 5 Cities or Regional Information Center (RIC) data coordinator (see Tips and Help Support Contacts.)
For questions about nySTART access and accounts, contact your nySTART administrator (details on our Tips Page.)
To contact us regarding interpretation of NYSED policy or data definitions/guidelines, please send e-mail to datasupport@nysed.gov.
To send us feedback or suggestions about the nySTART web application, please click the HELP button located in the bottom right corner of the screen.