Legal Approval

Summary: Presented by: Dr. Candace Alexander, Chief of Accountability and Research, Division of Accountability and Research

Request: It is requested that the DeKalb County Board of Education approve the renewal of Renaissance in an amount not to exceed $760,000 for SY 2026-2027.
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, particularly Goal Area 1: Student Academic 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 formative assessments with instant access to results, including standards analysis, most 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 2026-2027, DeKalb schools will continue to:
• Design and administer common 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.

Details: This proposed budget item is requesting funds not to exceed $760,000 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 Summative assessment items.
In an effort to reduce testing fatigue and prioritize meaningful instructional practices, DeKalb County School District has removed benchmark assessments from the assessment calendar.
Teachers will transition to developing common formative assessments through the Renaissance platform to monitor student progress.
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 Levels 1, 2, and 3.
• 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 develop and administer required common formative 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 SY2023-SY2026 :



Level
# of Assessments Created
# of
Assessments Created
# of
Assessments Created
# of Assessments Created


2022-2023
2023-2024
2024-2025*
2025-2026*


Elementary
31,069
29,242
99,455
95,048


Middle
10,555
10,374
24,321
27,900


High
14,069
14,235
35,418
40,402












*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 financial impact is an amount, not to exceed, $760,000 for FY27. The purchase amount will be paid using general funds budgeted to the Division of Accountability and Research, Department of Assessment Administration, GL code: 100.2210.553200.00011.7540.9990.8010.030.0000

Contact: Dr. Candace Alexander, Chief of Accountability and Research, Division of Accountability and Research, 678.676.0300
Dr. Felicia G. Rhone, Director, Assessment Administration, Division of Accountability and Research, 678.676.0300

Effective: September 2, 2026

Status: Approved by the Office of Legal Affairs