Trouble Shooting

Today we had a problem arise at a school in assigning assessments. I had the same problem when I tried to trouble shoot for them. What finally solved the problem was switching browsers. This shouldn't happen, of course, but in the course of companies changing browsers and systems, problems can arise. We can always try to solve the problems by first switching browsers. If it doesn't work on Safari or Explorer, does it work on Firefox? If it does work on that switch, we know that somehow things have changed with one of those browsers. If you have the opportunity to switch platforms, say from Windows to a Mac, does that change things? Does your problem exist on all of your computers using the same system, or does it work on one computer and not another? If you have tried what you can try on your own, you may have to contact your project leader for help. He/she may not have the answer, but he/she can direct you to someone who might be able to help you.

With all of the differences in how each school's networks can be set up, it is hard for anyone to know exactly what to do each time something comes up. Let us know, and we'll do our best to help you. The answer is frequently as simple as turning off your pop up blocker.

Year End Reports

There's a lot of the school year remaining, but it's still time to start thinking about next year. While you still have the data from this school year in your accounts, take a look at your assessments and run some of the reports that can tell you where your students have made progress and where they continue to struggle.

If you have been using Skills Iowa's benchmark assessments, you might want to run comparison reports using the Compare Assessments report. This report will allow you to compare selected assessments to see if your students have shown growth. With time left this year, there is still time to reteach some of the big concepts that have eluded your students.

The Overall Skills Performance report will show you the strong and weak spots for all of the assessments your students have taken in selected subjects over a selected period of time. Keep in mind that if some of your assessments were pretests, that those assessments will be included in this data.

Finally, if you want to zero in on individual students, you can run the Student Performance report, the last report in your list. This will allow you to select those assessments that you want to see in the same report and will allow you to select only those assessments you think should show mastery and give you the opportunity to not select the pretest assessments.

Assessment Center's reports are a valuable way for you to use data to drive your instruction. They are also a great way for you to make plans for the upcoming year.