USBE staff outline Acadience reporting, rostering and K–3 progress-monitoring rules under SB127

Assessment staff at the Utah State Board of Education (USBE) walked new assessment directors through the Acadience testing platform, reporting tools and rostering rules during a virtual training. Staff emphasized that districts must set testing windows in the ALO platform before student and class rosters flow into the system and reiterated progress-monitoring requirements in Senate Bill 127 for K–3 reading.

The session focused on the ALO platform, Acadience reports and how to enroll students in progress monitoring. Dallas Brooks, elementary ELA assessment specialist at USBE, described the learning goals for the training: “Our learning intention for today is to learn about the platform, accommodations, alternate assessments and rostering.” Brooks and colleagues demonstrated the ALO dashboard, how to toggle between Acadience reading and math, and how to drill down from district to school to class and student views.

Why it matters: ALO is the state’s operational interface for giving Acadience benchmark assessments and for viewing composite and submeasure results. USBE staff said districts must set testing windows in ALO before rostering will occur; without those dates, classes and students will not appear in ALO and rostering and progress-monitoring enrollment cannot proceed. Maureen Rushing, USBE assessment data specialist, warned against manual edits to classes or students in ALO: “If you add classes to ALO, they will definitely be overwritten by the nightly upload and they will disappear.”

Most important operational points: districts must set five date fields (school year start/end and benchmark windows) in ALO before students will roster; rostering is performed nightly via the state upload; teacher email addresses are now included in the nightly upload so accounts can be auto-created; and schools should not manually create classes or students because those entries are likely to be overwritten.

Staff also reviewed reporting tools. The benchmark overview and the “rainbow” and graph views let users see composite colors and pathways of progress across beginning, middle and end-of-year benchmarks. Dallas Brooks demonstrated how hovering over color blocks reveals which students are in each band and how to view student-level detail. Jared Wright, elementary math and science assessment specialist, explained that the progress-monitoring status bar is distinct from benchmark colors and is driven by the student’s last three progress-monitoring data points.

Legal and programmatic context: USBE staff said Senate Bill 127 requires progress monitoring for K–3 students who score below benchmark (yellow) or well below benchmark (red) on Acadience reading. Brooks summarized the state’s recommended monitoring cadence: students with a red reading composite should be monitored every 1–2 weeks, yellow every 2–4 weeks, green every 4–6 weeks and blue at least once between benchmarks. Wright noted that Acadience math progress monitoring is optional, but USBE recommends using a similar monitoring cadence for math when districts choose to implement it.

Enrollment and grouping: staff demonstrated how to enroll students in progress monitoring from a student list by selecting students, choosing a measure (for example, First Sound Fluency) and setting frequency. Maureen Rushing explained group creation for schools that rotate students between content teachers: “We only roster homeroom courses and we roster language arts courses. So schools or LEAs that use a rotation method … only roster the language arts class. So when you switch over to the math side, you can group your math students with their math teacher.” She said groups are independent of the nightly rostering upload and persist for the student while enrolled.

Staff reminded directors that data entry windows follow the testing window and that districts have an additional month to enter assessment data after testing closes. They also recommended being deliberate with group naming conventions and using the ALO grouping suggestions and growth-goals tools to organize small-group instruction and to set realistic, instructional goals.

Outlook: USBE staff offered follow-up training links and contact information and urged assessment directors to reach out with platform or rostering issues. Rushing said to allow 48 hours for newly uploaded students to appear in ALO and cautioned that student record changes (for example date of birth or address edits) can temporarily remove a student from rosters until the nightly upload reprocesses the record.