Caution
For schools or districts who have chosen to implement the Imagine Galileo ELA Benchmark or the NWEA™ MAP® Growth Assessment, the article below applies only to students in Grade Pre-K. If your school or district is using the Imagine Language & Literacy (IL&L) assessments, this article applies to all grade levels. If you aren't sure which assessment your school is using, read Checking which assessment option your organization is using.
Assessment opportunities are available 3 times a year during the following testing windows: Beginning-of-Year (BOY), Middle-of-Year (MOY), and End-of-Year (EOY). By default, all Benchmarks are enabled and all Reading Level Assessments (RLAs) are disabled. Although the BOY Benchmark can never be disabled, School Administrators and District Administrators can change the default settings of their assigned schools for the other 2 Benchmarks and for all 3 RLAs. This can be done at the beginning of the school year for all 3 testing windows or for individual testing windows throughout the year (as long as it's before each testing window ends).
Be sure you've read Understanding Placement and Benchmark tests in Imagine Language & Literacy and Understanding Reading Level Assessments in Imagine Language & Literacy to help you decide if you want to change these defaults. We strongly recommend that you keep all three Benchmark tests enabled because the scores provide a measurement of student growth throughout the year.
Additional Recommendations
- If you enable both the Benchmark and the RLA for the same testing period, your students will receive the RLA immediately after they finish the Benchmark. If you are concerned about testing fatigue, you can keep the Benchmark enabled and keep the Reading Level Assessment disabled during the first part of the testing window. Then, after most or all of your students have completed the Benchmark, change the RLA setting to Enabled towards the end of the testing period. Students will then have 28 days from the day they start the Reading Level Assessment to complete it.
- An additional consideration with the RLA is your student population. If most of your students are in Grades PreK-2, for example, you may not want to enable the RLA since students must be in Grade 2 or above (and have finished or tested out of the Beginning Books) to qualify for the assessment.
- Remember to communicate the enablement status to the teachers in your school or district, especially if you change any of the defaults or delay the start of the RLA to eliminate testing fatigue.
The table below summarizes the testing windows and dates and the default enablement settings. The windows open and close on UTC time so please plan accordingly.
| Test Period | Dates | Benchmark Default Setting | RLA Default Setting |
|---|---|---|---|
|
BOY |
August 1 - October 31 | Enabled (and cannot be disabled) |
Disabled |
|
MOY |
December 1 - February 28 | Enabled | Disabled |
|
EOY |
April 1 - June 30 | Enabled | Disabled |
Reminder
All new students take the Placement test to place them in their personalized starting point in the IL&L curriculum. All returning students take the Benchmark test. There is no option to enable or disable the Placement test; it is automatically delivered to all students who are brand-new to IL&L.
To change the default Benchmark/RLA enablement settings:
- Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy.
- Select an organization at the bottom of the Home page.
- On the right side of the dashboard for that organization, under the Test Settings heading, click Update Student Test Settings.
- Choose the Benchmark or Reading Level Assessment that you want to enable or disable from the drop-down list, then check the box(es) next to the school(s) where you want to change test enablement settings. To select all schools, click the checkbox to the left of the Name column in the header.
Note
The list of assessments available for editing varies throughout the year. If the testing window has already closed, you will not be able to select it from the drop-down list.
- Click Disable or Enable.
- Click Update Setting in the warning window.
- A confirmation message appears at the top of your screen; click Done at the bottom of the window to return to your dashboard.
- Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy.
- Select an organization at the bottom of the Home page.
- On the right side of the dashboard for that organization, under the Test Settings heading, click Update Student Test Settings.
- Click Edit next to the Benchmark or Reading Level Assessment that you want to change. The assessments that are editable depend on the time of year.
- Choose Enable or Disable for the test, then click Save.
- The test setting updates; click Done to return to the dashboard.