Item Banks in TAG

In this training, you will learn how to access TEKSready and DMAC's Pre-and Post-test items in TAG.

These two item banks make it easy to build beginning-of-year and end-of-year assessments for your district's TIA Student Growth measures.

In this video, we'll show you where to find this content, how your district gets access, and how to copy, edit, and deliver these assessments to students.

Before we get started, here are a few important things to understand.

TEKSready and DMAC's Pre-and Post-test items are not included with your TAG subscription. Both are purchased separately.

These item banks are generally more limited, and only a handful of people at your school will have access. They are more commonly used by Admins because the assessments relate to student growth and TIA measures for teachers.

Your district must maintain an active, renewed license each year to keep access to the content you create. If not renewed, you lose access to that item bank, and to any copies your team has created from it.

If your school would like to purchase the item banks for TEKSready or Pre-and Post-test Items in DMAC, please reach out to us directly or to your regional contact.

Everything starts in TAG.

Under Local Assessment, open TAG, then hover over Settings and select Restricted Content.

This is where your district manages access to TEKSready and DMAC Pre and Post.

Keep in mind that only a District Administrator can manage these settings.

If you're not the District Admin who was initially granted access to these item banks, please contact our Helpdesk.

From the Restricted Content screen, select a content source from the dropdown, TEKSready or DMAC Pre and Post.

The first time you do this, you'll be asked to accept a content agreement confirming how this content will be used, including for TIA.

A district administrator only has to accept this once per school year, for each content source.

Once the agreement is accepted, you'll see a list of users in your district.

Click Add next to anyone who needs access, and that content source will appear for them in TAG.

Keep this list intentionally small.

Access to your pre and post test item banks is typically limited to the handful of staff who build or administer these assessments, not shared district wide.

If you don't want someone to see the actual test content, simply don't add them here.

Quick note on the difference between the two.

TEKSready gives you prebuilt assessments from Region 10. Use them as is or edit them. Typically, schools make small adjustments to assessments to qualify for the District-Built Assessment category in your TIA plan. The TEKSready website includes blueprints showing item counts and item types available.

Pre-and Post-test Items in DMAC offer an item bank designed by Region 7. It includes individual items to pull from, based on your own blueprint, to build the test your district needs. If both item banks are purchased, you can source content from either area.

Once you have access, you'll see the content source in your test library.

To edit an assessment, find it and click the copy icon, the double paper icon next to the magnifying glass.

Give the copy a name that fits your district's testing scheme, for example, Astronomy BOY.

This creates a private user test that only you can see, and now you're free to edit it, remove, or add items.

Notice the warning when you make that copy.

You must have an active license to keep access to this content.

If you copy a TEKSready or DMAC Pre and Post assessment, or copy a copy of a copy, it still traces back to the original licensed source.

If your district doesn't renew that license the following year, access to every one of those copies is removed from your account.

This is unique to TEKSready and DMAC Pre and Post, since they're the first item banks to be purchased outside of what comes with the TAG application.

By default, only you can see the copy you create.

If others on your team need access, say, instructional coaches or specific campus staff, your district administrator can share that test directly with individual users, or with a share group they've set up. Once your assessment is ready, click the icon to send it to TEKScore.
You'll be asked to review the content to confirm everything looks right for students, then click Export.


First, use a consistent numbering scheme, for example, reserving the 900s for district-level assessments, so your data stays easy to find at the end of the year.

Second, decide on access.

You can allow full access to questions and results, hide questions only so teachers can still pull SE level results without seeing the items, or hide both questions and results so the assessment doesn't even appear on a teacher's dashboard.

Since TIA pre and post tests are usually given blind, most districts hide the questions, and this setting can be changed at any time.

On the Online tab, a few more settings are worth reviewing.

If you want to require a secure browser, make sure it's installed on student devices first, then contact DMAC support to enable it, there's no additional fee.

This year, we've also added Shuffle Choices and Shuffle Items, which randomize answer order and item order for extra test security.

Items tied to a reading passage always stay grouped together.

And you can control whether students can review their scored test afterward, for TIA pre and post assessments, we recommend leaving that set to None.

All of these settings are dynamic. It's best to set them before testing begins, but it is also possible to change them during testing. Students on a lockdown browser would have to restart their sessions if this happens.

Before you deliver the assessment, make note of the Test ID.

That's the one piece of information your teachers need to administer the test, and students will need it, along with their date of birth and local ID, to log in and take it.

That covers the essentials of using a TEKSready assessment. Finding restricted content, accepting your agreement, adding users, copying and editing assessments, and setting them up for Online Testing.

For a full catalog of available TEKSready assessments, visit TEKSready dot com.

For help deciding which reports to pull once results are in, check out DMAC's Report Index at dmac dash solutions dot net slash report index.