Summer School at a Glance
As stated in our Summer School Setup article and repeated below, we strongly recommend that summer sessions occur at the end of the school year, after spring session has concluded, and prior to the new school year rollover.
Recommended Setup
If you will be using FastBridge for summer school, there are a few considerations to keep in mind.
Your FastBridge subscription for the year expires on July 31st, but you will be able to continue using FastBridge until your Summer Session is finished.
Rollover
There are three dates available for your district’s new school year rollover. If you are conducting summer school in FastBridge, we strongly recommend selecting a rollover date that is AFTER your summer session has ended. We do not recommend rolling over to the new school year before the conclusion of your summer session.
When your rollover date comes, FastBridge will migrate your data to the new school year. Once your data has been moved to the new school year, you will not be able to access the previous school year, including the summer session. Data, including that from the summer session, will continue to be available in our historical reports, but the live instance of data (graphic reports, etc.) from the previous school year and summer session will no longer be available to you. For more information on the School Year Roll Over, see End of Year / School Year Roll Over.
It is not required that you follow these recommendations, but there are some potential repercussions of choosing to set up your summer session differently. Please see the information below that outlines what to expect if you choose to conduct your Summer School session after rollover.
Rolling Over to the New School Year Before Summer Session
Some districts may choose to roll over to the new school year before their summer session begins. We advise against this for a few reasons.
- Rolling over to the new school year means that students need to be placed in their classes for the upcoming school year. This includes promoting students to the next grade level, rostering students to new teachers and potentially new schools. The summer roster is often at odds with the new school year roster, as many students remain rostered to their current grade level through summer session prior to being promoted to the next grade level for the new school year. If a summer roster is uploaded with students still in their previous school year’s grade levels after FastBridge has rolled over to the new school year:
- A “delete enrollments” roster upload will need to be run to get rid of the summer school enrollments before uploading the new school year roster, or students will have dual enrollments
- Students will show up in both their previous and new school year grade levels in the Student Data Download for the entirety of the school year, regardless of whether a “delete enrollments” is run
- Districts integrated with Clever or DnA may run into additional challenges with students being enrolled at multiple schools, in more than one grade level, etc.
- Instead of Fall being the first screening period for the new school year, you would need to make Summer the first screening period since summer school would effectively be kicking off the new school year after rollover. This will have implications for reporting, as noted in the sections below.
Creating "Summer Schools" in FastBridge/Enrolling Students at Different School for Summer Session
To separate summer school from the regular school year, some districts will create summer schools in FastBridge. For example, a school may be called School A during the school year, but an additional school titled Summer School A may be created for the summer session.
Enrolling students in summer schools, or in an existing school that differs from their regular school year enrollment can bring about some unique challenges in FastBridge.
- The summer school roster often results in students having dual enrollments across schools in their district. When this happens, students will be given a choice in where to save their test scores. This is often missed, and test results sometimes end up being stored at the incorrect school. See the Summer School Setup “Roster” section for more information on this.
- We cannot delete schools from your district’s FastBridge account. We do have a “Deactivate Schools” function, which will hide the school but not completely delete it. Please see Rostering Students to Multiple Schools in FastBridge for more information.
Reporting Implications of Summer Sessions
FastBridge recommends only using 3 screening periods a year, but conducting screening in the summer session will require an additional screening period. This can lead to some changes in reporting for the school year.
- The Group Growth Report will not allow you to use the “Growth by Start Score” measure.
- If your Summer Session occurs after rollover, Summer will be recognized as the first screening period of the school year by the Group Growth Report. This report requires data from the first screening period of the school year to calculate growth, and if Summer is the first screening period, only students who participated in Summer Session will have data for this period. This means that the full functionality of the report will not be available.
Historical reports will capture the student’s latest enrollment for the previous school year.
- If a student is rostered to a separate school for summer school, historical reports, like the Group Screening Report, will capture the student’s enrollment at this location and their scores will be attached to that school for any reports from this school year.
- There are 3 choices in this situation.
- Enroll the student in a different school for the summer session and accept the consequences; the student’s scores for the previous school year will be tied to the student’s summer school.
- Dually enroll the student at their home school and at the summer school; this will allow the student to choose where to house their scores, as noted in the previous section.
- Keep the student enrolled at their home school for the summer session; this will ensure that the student’s scores for the previous school year remain tied to their home school in historical reports.