The Assessment Solution will help your school shift from outdated evaluation to true real-time assessment strategies. Support learning growth for students with standards-based grading, online assessments and transparency with parents through student ePortfolios that capture both formative and summative assessments.

This learning guide will help familiarize you with the features of the Assessment solution for users with Administrator privileges. If you want to learn how to take advantage of this solution as a teacher, please see our Assessment for Teachers guide.

While this guide will cover many of the features available, please refer to our extensive support articles for specific questions or reach out to us at support@chalk.com or through our Live Chat service (available Monday through Friday, 8am-4pm EST).

The following chapter of our learning guide will go over how to:

• Log into and navigate Admin
• Set user permissions
• Create Schools and Groups

Important Note: It is important that all of the admin portions are set up according to school standards ahead of teachers using the Gradebook, because once assessments are created, grades input, or attendance is taken, you may need to reach out to support@chalk.com for assistance in changing different parts.

Before setting up your school year, teachers, and students, it is important that you become familiar with Admin, and the permissions needed for administrators, and teachers. The articles below will help you walk through setting up your account.

This is part of our Assessment Solution. You will not have this option if you are a free user.

This article is an overview of the Assessment Admin features and what settings you can expect to be enabled for the Assessment Solution. Depending on your admin level, there are two ways to find your Settings.

Option 1: Settings on the Admin Navigation Menu

The first is on the left-hand menu. This is for Institutions with multiple schools (commonly larger districts). 

Option 2: Selecting Schools in the Admin Navigation Menu

This is what you will see if you're in a single school using Chalk. 

You will see Grading Scales, Marking Cycles, Reporting Options, and Conversations (if your institution has it enabled) which we will review quickly here, but go into greater detail in regards to when setting up your school year below.

1) Grading Scales: From your admin settings, you can set the scale for all teachers in your institution. There are two default scales: level and letter. If you would prefer to create a custom scale, click the Create New From Template button. To learn more about customizing your school's grading scale, click here.

2) Marking Cycles: This is where you will set up your school year, and terms, for all the teachers in your institution. This is addressed in Chapter 2: Setting up your School Year.

3) Reporting Options: Reporting Options is an optional step, when reports are needed across multiple terms. This function is mainly used to support students who have classes that are in different terms. This is addressed in Chapter 2: Setting up your School Year.

4) Conversations: Control if students and guardians can create and send posts and comments that teachers directly through Chalk. These controls are an “all or nothing”. This tab will not appear if your school does not have conversations turned on. This is addressed in Chapter 4: Student & Guardian Access, but can be skipped if it is not included in your Assessment Solution. 

This is part of our Assessment Solution. You will not have this option if you are a free user.

If you’re looking to make others within your institution Admins, click on the name and/or email of the account from the list on the User tab to be brought to that account permissions page. This can only be done once teachers have been added through CSV uploading. Here you can select Admin, Lesson Feedback, Markboard Oversight, Importer Exporter, and Support Teacher.  

1. Admin:  This permission will enable the Admin app for this account allowing this user to see and access Admin from both the Dashboard and the main navigation menu.
2. Lesson Feedback: This setting will allow admins to view teacher accounts.
3. Markboard Oversight: This permission is only available if the account has Admin and Lesson Feedback enabled, and will allow admins to view and edit gradebook data in teacher accounts.
4. Importer Exporter: This permission allows an admin to upload and download CSVs from Chalk.
5. Support Teacher: Support Teacher allows teachers to see student insights in the gradebook without editing privileges.

This is part of our Chalk Solutions. You will not have this option if you are a free user.

What are Schools and Groups?

Within Admin, there is a feature that allows you to create two types of smaller sub-groups within your institution. These sub-groups are called Schools and Groups. Having a School or Group allows you to set up roles and content specific to a group of people within your institution. This includes being able to create lesson plan templates, off-days and curriculum maps for one School/Group that are different from another School/Group, as well as set admin roles for a specific group of individuals.

Schools and Groups work very similarly and offer many of the same features. Here are some key features to take note of that apply to both Schools and Groups:

• There is no limit to the number of Schools and/or Groups an individual account can be in
• An individual account can have roles set for a specific School/Group (e.g. A teacher who works in two Schools may have admin rights and be able to view accounts, provide feedback on lesson plans or view insights in one School while having normal teacher-level permissions for the other School)
• Schools/Groups can have their own lesson templates, off-days and curriculum maps that are only made available to accounts within them
• Insights and lesson feedback features can be looked at through the lens of a specific School/Group, making it easier to focus on a specific sub-set of accounts within the institution

The key difference between Schools and Groups, is that Schools are created to represent the physical buildings within an institution (i.e. If you have multiple schools in your district, they’ll each have a School sub-group). A Group can be created to be within a specific school (i.e. School-wide Group for all of the Grade 3 French teachers within the same School) or span across the whole institution (i.e. Institution-wide Group for all of the Grade 3 French teachers within the district/institution).

Why create a School Instead of a Group?

An Admin is able to create their own groups within their school and have more independence.

This makes it much easier for a school administrator to manage their own staff, set their own off-days, as well as empower individuals within their school (e.g. Math Department lead) to take more ownership over their teams.

Why create an institution-wide Group instead of a Group within a School?

Institution Groups allow for teachers across different schools to more easily collaborate.

Consider a district with 2 (or more) elementary schools. Each School can have a Group within their School for their Grade 2 teachers to share week-to-week quickly and effectively. They can also set-up an institution-wide Grade 2 Group so that resources can be shared to the whole district. This makes it much easier for teachers to collaborate and have district or institution-wide cohesiveness.

Note: Make sure to continue with "How do I create Schools and Groups?" and "How do I add users to Schools and Groups?" to take full advantage of these features.

This is part of our Chalk Solutions. You will not have this option if you are a free user.

This article is a quick step by step guide on how to create Schools and Groups within your institution. For more information on what Schools and Groups are and why they are useful, read the article here. 

This is part of our Chalk Solutions. You will not have this option if you are a free user.

This article is a quick step by step guide to add users to Schools and Groups. While the actions are very similar, the navigation to get there is slightly different. For more information on School and Groups and why they're useful to your and your institution, click here.

Note: Only institution and school admins will be able to add users to Schools and Groups. Group admins will not have access to that feature.