HOMEROOM DASHBOARDS
Homeroom Dashboards - User Defined Assessments
Purpose
This content is intended for teachers, specialists, and administrators to build assessment test structures and upload assessment scores using Homeroom Enhanced.
Planning your ‘user-defined’ assessment – Overview
- What type of assessment are you entering into Homeroom? For example, is it benchmark, progress monitoring, chapter test, etc.?
- How to name your assessment? Does your district have its own standards for naming conventions?
- How is the test scored? – numeric or letter score; Pass –Fail (Met – Not Met)?
- If it is a scored assessment:
- What is the minimum score and maximum score?
- Does the assessment have performance levels/cut score ranges?
- If yes to either, you will need to have a minimum passing score (threshold) and cut scores for one or many levels.
- Does the assessment have strands?
- For example: If you give a weekly diagnostic assessment (a progress monitoring assessment), you may want to see each week’s/month’s scores side by side. The weekly/monthly scores could be added as strands.
- OR you may be administering a math assessment tied to specific standards. The standard scores could be added as strands.
Creating an Assessment
- Navigate to Create New Assessment located under the My Creations section of the left navigation menu.
A detailed screen will appear.
- Enter the Test Name and Label.
- The test name should be a unique assessment name of the test.
- The label may be a shorter version of the Test Name or may be kept the same. In Homeroom, the assessment test label is displayed in the assessment test selector in the assessments widget.
- It is good practice to have the Assessment Test Names contain the following elements in this order:
- Test Name
- Subject
- Administration
- Grade Level
Examples: EasyCBM Read Winter Gr 2
RBA 3 Read EOY Gr 5
Valley Elem Science Nov Gr 4
CBA Algebra I S2 Final HS
- Select a ‘Parent Assessment’ if the test being created will be a ‘stranded’ or ‘sub’ test and the ‘main’ or ‘overall’ test is already created, otherwise leave unselected.
- If it is a scored assessment, skip Is Met/Not Met.
- If students aren’t to be tested multiple times on this test, skip Progress Monitoring.
- For Progress Monitoring to work, the scores need to be uploaded with a date tested on the upload template.
- Enter the Chronological Ordinal number.
- Example: 6100 is Grade 6 on the 100th day. This helps to order the assessment in a display with others.
- Enter the minimum, threshold (passing score or benchmark), and maximum scores for the test
- Select the Subject Area (examples: Mathematics, Science, etc)
- Select a Family, if a relevant one is listed. It is optional, but helpful for filtering in other areas. Example: if this assessment is used to monitor HiCap Students, the Family might be HiCap. Or if it is a Progress Monitoring score from Dibels: Family would be Dibels.
- Select a Scope.
- This is a key factor in creating a user-defined assessment to determine where it is seen and who can access it to upload scores to it.
- Scope option is determined by the user’s personal role of which scopes can be used: Class, School, or District. By default, State and District are displayed in Assessment widgets, but the other scopes are selectable to view.
- It’s important to note that any person who has the permission to view a student's record will be able to view the results of a user-defined assessment, no matter the scope.
- Skip Start Date or End Date, unless you only want to allow you or others to upload to the assessment during that date range.
- Enter Performance Level(s) names and score ranges; at least one is required. These determine what color a student’s score is going to display. Example: At Risk, Low Risk, Some Risk, or No Risk.
- Performance Levels (required/optional) – If a test is set up as Met/Not Met these are not required. If there is to be a score, at least ONE Performance Level is needed.
- Fill in the Performance Level Name, Min Score, Max Score and select a Color for each Level.
- Click +Add Level to add more
- If more than one level is added, the Max score of the levels (excluding the highest level) is like a “less than” number, so the level could optionally include decimals. Example: Level 1 is 0 – 30 (includes scores 0 up to 29.9999);Level 2 is 30 – 60 (includes scores 30 up to 59.9999); Level 3 is 60 – 80 (includes scores 60 up to 79.9999); Level 4 is 80 – 100.
- Click Save Test
For more details on each field used in user-defined assessment creation, visit this FATS Help Center article
Other Tools related to User-Defined Assessments
Editing: If you made an error or need to adjust anything after you’ve saved, you can edit the assessment.
- Expand 'My Assessments' with ‘My Creations’ and then click ‘Edit My Assessments’
- Locate the assessment in the list, click on the assessment.
- Once you’ve made your edits to the Assessment, click Save
Cloning: You may administer some of your assessments more than once per year, for example a reading benchmark that you administer in the fall, winter, and spring. Instead of repeating the same above for each, click Clone (or copy) the assessment to save time:
- To clone an assessment, return to the upload tool and select Define/Edit Test.
- Select the Clone Existing Test button, and choose the assessment from the list: BOY - Practice. The assessment structure you had previously created is displayed.
- Notice the Assessment Test Name and label are blank. Enter your new assessment test name: MOY – YourLastName.
- After cloning, update or change, your chronological ordinal to match your new administration
*** If assessments were previously created, begin here for uploading scores. ***
Downloading the scores template
- Navigate to Upload Assessment Scores located under the My Creations section of the left navigation menu.
- On the left side, under the “1. Download” area, do the following:
- Click Assessment Tests, select one or more assessments from the list. If strands are part of the assessment, they will automatically be selected after clicking Add.
- Click Student Groups, select one or more groups of students to include.
- Student Identifiers, by default SSID & Homeroom Student ID are selected.
- Click Download
- A spreadsheet is downloaded to your computer with a generic file name.
- We recommend renaming the file to something that will help to identify it. Using the assessment name, student group name, and/or date are good options to include.
Entering and Uploading Students’ Scores
- Open the scores spreadsheet generated above.
- Student Names and IDs do not have to be entered because they are already populated.
- OPTIONAL, add test administration or test date for reference.
- Test Date is used in Progress Monitoring and Test Administration to create multiple displays of the same assessment that might be administered more than one time.
- Manually enter students’ scores.
- The spreadsheet has been programmed so that invalid scores cannot be entered, do not edit ANY column names or other information provided in either format.
- Save the file.
- Navigate back to Homeroom
- Click 'My Creations', then click ‘My Assessments’, and then click ‘Upload Assessment Scores’.
- On the right side, under “2. Upload”,click Browse.
- Locate your saved file on your computer
- click Upload.
Viewing the Results
- You will receive an email letting you know if the upload was successful or not.
- If there are any errors you aren’t sure about, contact support@schooldata.net.
- Click 'My Creations', then click 'My Assessments', and then ‘View Uploaded Scores
- Click the Row Action for your newly uploaded assessment to "View Scores".
- You will now be presented with a data table of data you just uploaded
School Data Solutions [updated 03/21/2021]
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