Managing Screening Periods

District Managers are responsible for setting the district's default screening periods. Default screening periods apply to all schools and grades within the district.

A period extends from the beginning of one period to the beginning of the next period. Within a period, the screening periods is the window of time you set for universal screening. Each assessment may be taken at any time, but only once, during each period; however, to be included in the calculation of local norms, the assessment needs to be taken within the screening period. FastBridge Learning recommends screening periods extend for approximately four weeks, or however much time you need to screen all of your students. Students tested outside the screening period, such as students who enter the district after the period has closed, will still receive percentile comparisons to national norms, but they will not be compared to other students in your local norms. Students tested outside the screening window are assumed to have had the benefit of additional instructional time and can not be fairly compared to students tested at the beginning of the period. In reports, the scores of students tested outside the screening period are in gray, whereas the scores of students tested within the screening period are color coded according to percentile group. For more information on color coding of scores, see the section on "Percentile Rankings" in Visual Conventions.

To set or make adjustments to the default screening periods, go to the District Manager tab, and select Default Screening Periods from under Assessment Info.

FastBridge Learning recommends three screening periods a year: Fall, Winter and Spring, and provides three corresponding sets of benchmarks, norms and composites. If you are using FastBridge over the summer, a fourth screening period should be added. FastBridge allows up to five screening periods. If you need more than three periods, you should use the set of benchmarks, norms and composites closest in time to your additional periods.

In lieu of using FastBridge benchmarks, you can set your own benchmarks by individual assessment. For more information on customizing benchmarks, see Setting Up Custom Benchmarks. If you have set any custom benchmarks, they will override the default benchmarks selected here.

To edit one of the default screening periods, click on the pencil on the corresponding line.

This opens the line to be edited. You can change the name, start date, duration and default norms, benchmarks and composites for the screening period. When you are finished, click the green check mark to save your changes.

Note: You must select a date from the calendar to get the date to hold.

Adding Additional Screening Periods

To add an additional screening period at the end of the year, click on the green plus sign in the last line.

This adds a new line to the bottom of the list. Fill in the information for the new line, and click the green check mark to save the line.

Inserting an Additional Screening Period

Screening periods must be listed in chronological order, and they can not overlap. To insert an additional period between two existing periods, you will first need to edit the existing periods to get the desired result. 

In the following example, we will be adding a new screening period between the existing Fall and Winter period. The existing Winter and Spring screening periods will need to be edited to make "time" for the new period. First (1) click on the pencil next to the Winter screening period to (edit) change it into the new period.

Change the information in the current Winter screening period to that of the new screening period. In this case, we are adding a screening period for Late Fall. Click the green check mark to save your changes.

Next we need to turn the Spring screening period into the Winter screening period. (2) Click on the pencil next to the Spring screening period to turn it into the Winter screening period.

(3) Now you can click the green plus sign next to what is now the Winter screening period to get a new line for your Spring screening period.

The end result will look like this: