Agenda Item
a. Renewal of Renaissance Products and Services (Not to exceed $750,000)
Summary: Presented by: Dr. Candace Alexander, Chief, Accountability & Research, Division of Accountability & Research
Request: It is requested that the Board of Education approve the renewal of Renaissance in an amount not to exceed $750,000 for SY 2025-2026.
The requested purchase is a testing expenditure that does not require bid per the District’s Purchasing Board Policy (DJE).
Why: This solution supports the tenets of all Strategic Goal areas, but in particular, Goal Area 1: Student Success with Equity and Access by actualizing the following performance objectives:
Improve student mastery of learning standards.
Provide academically rigorous courses and pathways.
Increase graduation rate.
Renaissance Education is an assessment (DnA) platform with extensive academic content aligned to the Georgia Standards of Excellence with professionally designed assessments and reports that inform district, school, classroom, and student-level data.
The Renaissance Education DnA platform provides insightful district information around academic data with tools and reports to inform standards-based decision making. The data available through the platform benefits District Leaders, Curriculum Leaders, and Teacher Leaders.
Through Renaissance DnA, schools and teachers can quickly build and administer common assessments with instant access to results, including standards analysis, most commonly missed items, and subgroup analysis. The district also utilizes multiple data points from the assessment platform to design system-wide professional learning.
Through the renewal of Renaissance for SY 2025-2026, DeKalb schools will continue to:
Design common and formative assessments
Analyze classroom, district, and state-level data.
Generate reports utilizing multiple academic data sources.
Utilize assessment item banks for remediation, acceleration, and professional development.
Inform instructional practices and school turnaround efforts at the local and district level.
Administer DeKalb’s Benchmark Assessments.
Details: This proposed budget item is requesting funds not to exceed $750,000 to cover the costs associated with the purchase of the Renaissance Assessment Platform and professional learning services.
Through the Assessment platform, DCSD K-12 educators will have access to over 100,000 Formative, Common, and Benchmark assessment items. The test items have the following attributes:
Aligned to Georgia Standards of Excellence in all four content areas: English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies
Multiple item types - selected response, constructed response and extended response (which simulates the GADOE Milestones Assessments)
Flexible delivery - items in Microsoft Office Word; passages in PDF; and images in JPEG
Varying levels of complexity- Depth of Knowledge: DOK 1 - 20%, DOK 2 - 60% and DOK 3 - 20%
English Language Arts items will be associated with passages that reflect readability and text complexity appropriate to the grade level.
The Renaissance platform includes the following features necessary to administer required formative, common, and benchmark assessments in tandem with DeKalb’s curriculum:
Document camera scanning for easy and instant assessment scoring
Traditional and standard-based grade books and report cards
Online testing, proctoring, monitoring, and dashboards to provide instant performance feedback
Reporting that provides the big picture around effective instructional practices, direction for differentiated instruction, and item analysis to pinpoint student misconceptions
The online portal allows digital access to students and parents to get real-time performance feedback
Usage Data SY2022-SY2025
Level
# of Assessments Created
# of Assessments Created
# of
Assessments Created
# of
Assessments Created
2021-2022
2022-2023
2023-2024
2024-2025*
Elementary
30,298
30,526
28,571
99,455
Middle
10,550
10,555
10,374
24,321
High
15,284
14,069
14,235
35,418
*The assessments include District benchmark assessments, common formative assessments, and summative assessments created by teachers, administrators, content coordinators, academic coaches, and MTSS teams.
Financial impact: The purchase amount will be paid using general funds budgeted to the Division of Accountability and Research, Department of Assessment Administration, charge code: 100.2210.553200.00011.7540.9990.8010.030.0000
Contact: Dr. Candace Alexander, Chief of Accountability & Research, Division of Accountability & Research, 678.676.0300
Dr. Felicia G. Rhone, Director of Assessment Administration, Division of Accountability & Research, 678.676.0300
Effective: September 2, 2025
Status: Approved by the Office of Legal Affairs