How do I get to this page?
- Log in to Renaissance.
- On the Home page, select your initials in the upper-right corner. In the drop-down list, select Manage Apps & Users.
- On the Manage Apps & Users page, select School Calendar.
- On the School Calendar page, select the Screening Windows tab.
If you are setting up a new school year, when you come to this page and select Screening Windows, you will see a reminder that the district screening window defaults have already been set.
Who can do this with default user permissions?
- All users: can view district screening windows and school screening windows
- District Administrators and District Staff: can create, edit, and use district screening windows
- School Administrators and School Staff: can create, edit, and use school screening windows (can only use district screening windows assigned to their school; cannot edit or create district screening windows)
Screening windows are a span of dates during which students have a test administered. Screening windows can be used for many purposes:
- Reporting—focusing on data from a single screening window or comparing growth between multiple screening windows.
- Goal-setting—for example, when setting a goal for a group of students to improve test scores by 50% by the end of the school year, you could set up four screening windows spaced throughout the school year to serve as checkpoints when you monitor their progress towards that goal.
- Determining test type—the setting of the Enterprise Tests Preference (school- and class-level) can have different effects depending on whether a student takes a test inside or outside of a screening window.
There are two types of screening windows: district and school.
- District screening windows are used by district level administrators and district staff to view assessment data at the district level in Schoolzilla and Renaissance Analytics. When a district screening window is assigned to a school, it becomes usable by any user at that school with sufficient permissions to run reports, and it will be listed under District Screening Windows for those users.
- School screening windows are used by school level administrators, school staff, and teachers to view assessment data at the school level (and, in some cases, at a more "granular" level, e.g. the class or student level).
At the start of a new school year, three district screening windows are set up by default:
- Fall: 8/15–9/30
- Winter: 12/1–1/15
- Spring: 4/15–5/31
Each default district screening window has a default school screening window "inside" it, with the same start and end dates. Although the default windows can be edited like any other, there are some restrictions:
- A default school window must always remain inside its default district window. (School windows that you create yourself can fall outside district windows.)
- If you try to change the dates for a default district window and the change would cause its default school window to start or end outside of it, you will see an alert and you will not be able to save the change. You would either have to (a) change the dates of the default school window first or (b) delete the default school window.
- Changes to default windows (both district and school) are not carried over from one school year to the next—the dates above are always used for the initial creation of the default windows.
District screening windows (including the defaults) are listed at the top of the page; school screening windows (not including the defaults) are listed at the bottom. For each, the name of the window, the date range it covers, and the number of schools using that window are given.
To see which schools have been included in a particular screening window, select the arrow at the right end of the window's row.
By default, this page shows screening windows for the current school year. To view and edit screening windows from prior school years, select View History in the upper-right corner, then select the desired year in the drop-down list.
You will see a reminder of the school year you are working in at the top of affected pages:
You will continue working in the chosen school year until you (a) come back to this page and select a different school year, (b) leave the Screening Windows tab, or (c) select View History again and then select Close History on the right—all of these actions will put you back in the current school year).
A small number of past school years do not have schools assigned to district screening windows. In those cases, all student test scores will be shown in Schoolzilla. If you are working in one of those school years, you will see the following reminder:
These district windows can still be edited, but schools cannot be assigned to them; the arrow at the end of the row (which shows/hides schools assigned to a district screening window) will not be shown.
- District administrators and district staff: Select Create District Screening Window to create a district screening window, or Edit at the end of the row for an existing district screening window to edit it.
Selecting Edit for a default district screening window also lets you edit the default school screening window inside it.
- School administrators and school staff: Select Create School Screening Window to create a school screening window, or Edit at the end of the row for an existing school screening window to edit it.