What is the year-end closeout process for eduTest Assessment?

Details

Resolution

PLATO EDUTEST ASSESSMENT CLOSEOUT PROCESS:

Introduction

At the end of the school year, administrators should review student, classroom, and school reports and make decisions about the management of data for next year. Due to the nature of online assessment and the storage of testing information, administrators should carefully review the following processes for customer closeout.

Closeout starts on Friday evening, and is completed by Sunday night depending on how much data has to be closed out and how many systems are running. You will be locked out of your account during the closeout process, and the process cannot be interrupted.

If you schedule tests before or during closeout, the schedules will be lost. Do not schedule tests until after your closeout process has been completed.

Getting started:

To access the closeout feature, log in to www.edutest.com with your district administrator customer ID, user ID, and password. From the Main Menu, select Account Management then scroll to the bottom of the page to access the Customer Data Management options.

User and Classroom Information:

1. Select a closeout date from a list of available Friday dates.
   
   

   The closeout process begins at 12:01 a.m. ET on the Friday you select. The entire process will last approximately 6-24 hours. You will not be able to access the system during the closeout time period. A "system unavailable" message will display to all users who attempt to log in during closeout.
   
   

2. Select how you want your user database modified during closeout.
   
   
   1. You can choose to keep all students and instructors.
      
      
      • If you select this option, you will need to re-add all of your new students and instructors, as well as delete users no longer in the school system.
      • If you do not select to keep these users, their accounts will be deleted from the user database.
        
   2. You can choose to keep classrooms and their associations to students and instructors.
      
      
      • If you select this option, you will keep all of the previous year's classrooms and the students and teachers in those classrooms. This is recommended only if you have very few students moving to new classes for the next year.
      • If you do not select this option, the classrooms will be deleted from the database.
        
        
3. Select whether or not you would like an export of your test data.  PLATO Support will make these files available for you to download on the PLATO FTP site.  The data files are in .CSV format and are zipped into a password protected file. 
   
   

4. If you elect to receive the data export, you will be prompted for contact and shipping information. Please include the contact name, phone number and email address of the person requesting the data files.  A PLATO Support representative will contact that person and supply them with instructions to download the data files.  The zip file includes data from the current school year only. This option is only appropriate for those districts that have the ability to manipulate this raw data themselves or in conjunction with a third-party vendor. The zip file does not include data in a report format. PLATO Learning does not provide support or services for this data manipulation. The raw data will then be removed from your account during closeout.
   

5. If for some reason you do not hear from PLATO Support about downloading the data files, please call PLATO Support at 1-800-869-2200 for assistance. 

Online Reports

All online reports will be deleted from your database during the closeout process. Once your closeout is completed, your reports will no longer be available online, even if you decide to keep all of your users in your database.

To ensure that teachers and administrators have a record of test results and user information from the past school year, you should print all classroom and individual student reports before the closeout date and put them in a file for next year. Once printed, educators can keep the reports under the appropriate classroom or student file for easy access in the future.

Online Tests:

Any Create-A-Test that is created by your users will remain in the database for the next school year. However, if a Create-A-Test has not been used in the past 18 months, PLATO Learning will delete it. If you have teachers who are leaving, you may choose to have them delete any Create-A-Tests belonging to them prior to deleting their teacher login.

Learn more about PLE! Use our Training Tutorials and User Guides to learn about the new features available to you in PLE.