Create a Common Assessment: For Admins & Coordinators

This guide shows System Admins, School Admins, and Assessment Coordinators how to set up and share a Common Assessment on Wayground. If you need this capability, contact your Admin to update your role.

Every Common Assessment begins with an Assessment. On Wayground, you can create Assessments by uploading existing materials to convert them into Wayground Assessments, building from scratch with 20+ state-test aligned interactive question types, or generating standards‑aligned questions with Wayground AI. You can also use an existing Assessment in My Library or explore the Wayground Library.

Create the Common Assessment

Once your Assessment is ready and tagged, open the Assessment and click Create in the bottom-left Common Assessment tile on the Assessment page. 

Common Assessment Settings

If an assessment contains questions that are not tagged to standards, Wayground will prompt you to add the missing tags. Tagging ensures your reports include richer insights, organized by standard.

• Title: use a clear title. A consistent naming style helps you manage assessments later (e.g., “[District] [Subject] [Grade] Unit [#]”)
• Subjects and grades: tag the assessment with the right subjects and grades so it appears correctly in listings and reports.

Schedule

• Start and end time: Teachers can only run the assessment between these times. The window can span hours, days, or weeks. Add buffer time for absences or re-attempts. The start time cannot be in the past.
• Assessment Duration (optional): The assessment duration is just a guidance that is shared with teachers and does not actually set a timer. An assessment session ends only when the student submits or a teacher ends the session.

Universal tools and Accommodations

Set tools and Accommodations that apply to every student taking the Common Assessment.

• Disabled: no student sees the tool / setting.
• Enabled: every student sees the tool / setting.
• Teacher Set Accommodation: only students whose teacher has enabled it in their accommodations profile see the tool / setting.

Tools you can configure for your assessment

• Calculator You can configure the four function calculator, desmos scientific and/or the graphing calculator for the assessment.
• Reference Materials Reference Materials let you attach documents to a Common Assessment so students can access supports like formula sheets, rubrics, or writing guides while they test.ached, and students don't see a References panel.
• Read-Aloud You can configure Read Aloud (Text-to-Speech) for the assessment.
• Reduce Answer Choices

• Disabled (default): all students see the full set of answer choices. This matches state test formats and is recommended for high-stakes Assessments such as unit tests and quarter finals.
• Teacher Set Accommodation: only students whose teacher has enabled it see reduced answer choices.

Assessment integrity

• LockDown Browser blocks other apps, websites, and tabs during the assessment. When you turn the Require LockDown Browser setting on, students must take the assessment in LockDown Browser. Read more

• Allowlisted applications: if your assessment needs access to a third-party app or website (a news article, a YouTube video, or Zoom for web conference), add it to the allowlist so students can access it during the session.
• Device support: LockDown Browser works on Mac, Windows, and Chromebook. For other devices, contact support@wayground.com. Read more about the system requirements for LockDown Browser
• If LockDown Browser is off, the Assessment opens in full-screen with the Anti-Cheating Monitor. Wayground notifies teachers when a student tries to switch tabs or open a new one. Learn more about the Anti-Cheating Monitor.

• Shuffle questions: randomizes question order for each student. Use this only if question order does not affect the Assessment.
• Shuffle answer options: randomizes the order of answer choices for Multiple Choice questions.

Teacher permissions

• Allow teachers to view the assessment: keep this off so teachers cannot see questions beforehand. This prevents teaching to the test.

• Allow teachers to view the class report: lets teachers see their class’s performance before the end date. On by default for Assessments that have Open-Ended questions that need manual grading.

• Allow teachers to add student records: lets teachers add records for students who need Accommodations (like scribe support) or who take the Assessment offline (like students in detention). Teachers must provide a reason, which is logged in the Common Assessment report.

Reporting configuration

Performance bands

Performance bands define accuracy ranges to group students into performance levels. They apply to overall scores, standards, and individual questions, and help you spot trends across classes, schools, subgroups, and districts.

Adjust the ranges to match your grading scale:

• Did not meet: performance is below the expected threshold. Key concepts may need reteaching.

• Partially met: emerging understanding. Some review or support may be needed.

• Met: solid understanding. Performance matches expectations.

• Exceeded: strong accuracy and depth. Ready for enrichment or extension.

Accountability goal

Set a target for the percentage of students expected to reach the Met or Exceeded bands. Reports compare actual performance against this target and highlight cohorts, schools, and classes that meet or miss it.

Once Configuration is complete, click Continue to move to the Sharing page.

Assign to Teachers (Sharing page)

On the Sharing page, choose how to assign the Common Assessment to teachers. You have two options: by courses (recommended) or via a custom team.

Option 1: Via courses (recommended)

Pick the course, term, and schools from the dropdowns.

This is the fastest way to assign a Common Assessment across your district. Wayground uses course mapping from via Clever or ClassLink roster syncs) to automatically assign the assessment to every teacher who teaches the selected course.

Select assignment method for teachers

1. Clever or ClassLink class (recommended)

Teachers can assign assessments only through their Clever or ClassLink classes. Course sections are synced automatically, ensuring that each student’s school and subgroup associations are mapped accurately. This gives admin reports correct school and subgroup attribution and reliable data for deeper reporting.

2. Any class

Teachers can assign the assessment to any class.

• Teachers must tag each class to the correct school for school attribution.

• If a class is synced from a Learning Management System such as Google Classroom, Canvas, or Schoology, grades pass back to the LMS class gradebook.

Option 2: Via a custom team

Assign the Common Assessment to a team of teachers you have created. This helps with specialized groups or non-standard teams, such as cross-school PLCs, pilot cohorts, or departments not tied to a single course.

• Create a new team: To learn how to build a team, see this article. You can also upload a spreadsheet of teacher emails to build a large team quickly. 

• Select an existing team: pick a team, and Wayground assigns the Assessment to its members automatically. 

School selection (District Plans only)

On District Plans, there is one extra step: select the schools the Common Assessment should be assigned to. This makes sure School Admins from those schools can see it in their Wayground account and access their school’s reports.

Wayground adds School Admins from the selected schools, along with all System Admins in your account, to the Common Assessment team.

Edit Permissions by Role and Assessment Status

Share edit access: by default, only the creator can edit a Common Assessment. To let others edit, add them as co-editors from the share settings on the resource details page.

Reopening an ended Common Assessment

The creator can reopen an ended Assessment to extend the deadline or include students who missed the original testing window, such as after absences or class disruptions.

To reopen an Assessment:

• Open the Ended tab on the Common Assessments dashboard.

• Click the Assessment you want to reopen.

• Click EReopen.

• Set a new end date.

Managing membership

The creator can see which teachers and admins have access to a Common Assessment directly from the details page, without opening a separate section.

Who has access

• System Admins: access every Common Assessment in the organization.

• School Admins: access Assessments shared with their school, whether they joined Wayground before or after the Assessment was created.

• Assessment Coordinators: access Assessments shared with the schools they oversee. [confirm Assessment Coordinator access scope matches the live product, and whether they appear in the membership overview alongside System Admins and School Admins]

• Teachers: access syncs from the Teams or Courses the Assessment is assigned to.

Teacher access follows the Assessment’s timeline. Before the start date, Wayground syncs both additions and removals from the linked Teams or Courses. Between the start date and the end date, only new teacher additions sync. After the end date, no one can add or remove teachers from the Assessment.

To change which teachers have access, update the Teams or Courses in the share settings panel for that Assessment. If you assigned the Assessment to a custom team, add or remove teachers from the Teams section in My Library.