Monday, the Tennessee Department of Education released Schoolnet, the online platform to house the department’s suite of free and optional assessment supports for the 2020-21 school year.
Officials said, "Now more than ever, it is essential that school leaders, educators and even parents can reliably benchmark student progress and receive actionable data for the coming school year. The department is providing Schoolnet to districts based off feedback and requests from Tennessee teachers desiring a free, optional assessment platform that will house formative assessments, start of year checkpoints and currently released TCAP items."
"Assessing student learning is an integral part of the Tennessee education system that enables us to know where students are progressing and how to better serve all students.
As schools reopen this month, Schoolnet will provide critical tools for our educators to understand what their students need academically,” said Commissioner Penny Schwinn. “I am glad we can meet the need so many districts have expressed by providing a suite of free, optional innovative assessment supports to empower educators with earlier insights into student progress.”
Schoolnet will allow teachers, schools and districts to create their own formative tasks and assessments for students to use while providing immediate, actionable data to help inform instruction. The platform contains innovative, optional assessment tools aligned to Tennessee standards including:
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Start of Year Checkpoints: These are intended to provide districts with information on student performance at the beginning of the year and help inform educators about student readiness for the year ahead.
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Mock Interim Assessments: These will be complete blueprint-aligned assessments that mirror the current TCAP summative assessments to give information on student performance in advance of end of year testing
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TCAP Item Bank: This will serve as a central location for released items from TCAP assessments for all tested grades and subject areas. Items will continue to be added regularly.
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Teacher-created Formative Assessments: Using the TCAP Item Bank, educators will be able to create their own formative tasks and assessments for students to use while providing immediate data to help inform instruction.
Districts have increased flexibility and can create and administer these free, optional assessments year-round via paper or online. Schoolnet also provides the option to print a PDF and answer document for paper-based testing, which also has multiple scoring options. Online testing will also provide automatic grading and reporting capabilities with the same look and feel of actual TCAP online testing.
"As schools reopen across the state, Schoolnet will provide essential assessment tools and resources to schools and educators to understand student progress and where focus is needed as we navigate this new school year,” said Dr. Terri Anglin, Curriculum and Instruction Supervisor 5-8 and District Testing Coordinator, Decatur County Schools. “I am thankful to the department for providing these innovative assessment tools in a flexible format at no cost to districts so we can best serve all our students.”
District and building level users have already received log-in information and educators who teach in tested subjects will receive log-in information to the platform via email today. Users with log-in credentials can access the platform here: tn.schoolnet.com.
As part of the Best for All strategic plan, these supports are part of the department’s innovative assessment initiative. Instructional videos, help documents, and how-to resources for using the platform are available at https://tn.mypearsonsupport.com. More details on each of these resources are available in the department’s one-pager.
For access to additional resources related to reopening schools, visit the Tennessee Department of Education’s Reopening webpage: https://www.tn.gov/education/health-and-safety/update-on-coronavirus/reopening-guidance.html.