The first few tests you build in PaperScorer are easy to keep track of. A year in, things are different. You have a question bank in the hundreds, assessments for every unit, and if you're in a district, a growing set of shared benchmarks that every teacher can see.
Two problems show up at that point. Teachers need to find things and understand results by topic, not just by test. And districts need to control who sees which shared assessment.
Tags solve the first problem. Visibility groups solve the second.
Part 1: Tags
What a tag is
A tag is a label you choose and attach to a question or to a whole assessment. For example, "fractions", "unit 3", "lab safety" or "vocabulary". You decide what the tags are and how they're named.
Adding and editing tags, and the tag reports, are available on Pro and Enterprise. AI auto-tagging works on every plan.
Tags and standards are different things
Standards are the official alignments your state or district uses. Tags are your own vocabulary, such as units, skills, topics, or anything else you want to group by. You can use both on the same question, and the reports show them side by side using the same performance bands.
Why tags matter
You can find things again. Tag your assessments and you can filter the assessment list to pull up every unit 3 quiz. When you build a new test from questions written in PaperScorer, filter the item bank by tag and reuse the questions you've already written on that topic instead of writing them again. A question carries its tags into every assessment you reuse it in.
You can see results by topic, not just by test. A test score tells you how a student did overall. Tag reports tell you what they struggled with. After you scan, the results overview includes:
- Performance by Tag, which compares every tag on the assessment by performance band
- Mastery by Tag, which shows how many students mastered each tag
- The By Tag tab under Lowest Performing, which charts up to 20 of the weakest tags so you know where to start
Click a tag in the chart to see the students or questions behind it. That's the fastest way to go from "the class struggled with ratios" to a reteach group with names in it.
You can take the data with you. When you export results, turn on Include tags to add each student's tag scores to the export.
How to add tags
- One question at a time: use the Tags field when you edit a question.
- Several questions at once: select the questions on an assessment, choose Update questions…, and enter tags. What you enter replaces the tags already on those questions, everywhere they're used. Leave the field blank to keep them.
- Whole assessments: use the Tags field on the assessment form to organize your assessment list.
- With AI generation: when you generate questions with AI, check Auto-tag questions with AI, on any plan. Each generated question gets one to three topic tags, at no extra token cost.
Tips for tags that stay useful
Keep your tags working for you
- Keep the list short. A few dozen consistent tags beat hundreds of near-duplicates like "fraction", "fractions" and "fractions-unit"
- Pick a naming pattern and stick to it, such as topic names in lowercase or "unit 1" through "unit 8"
- Tag questions before you scan. Tag scores are calculated when each sheet is scored, so if you add tags afterward, use Rescore on the assessment to bring them into existing results
- Use standards for official alignment and tags for everything else, so you don't have to choose one or the other
Part 2: Visibility groups (Enterprise)
Shared assessments, and why they needed a limit
On Enterprise, district administrators can create shared assessments (listed as Shareable assessments on the Enterprise plan), such as benchmarks, common unit tests and finals. Teachers in the district can view and scan them, but they can't edit them. That keeps one version of the test and one answer key across every classroom.
Until now, a shared assessment was visible to every teacher in the district. That works for a district-wide benchmark, but not when only some teachers should see a test.
What a visibility group is
A visibility group is a named group of teachers in your district, such as "Grade 8 Math", "Biology" or "Pilot classrooms". District administrators create the groups and decide who belongs to each one.
When you create or edit a shared assessment, the Visible to field lets you limit it to one or more groups. Only teachers in those groups will see it.
Why visibility groups matter
Test security. The best way to keep a benchmark from circulating ahead of time is to limit who can see it in the first place. With a visibility group, the grade 8 benchmark is visible only to the teachers giving it.
Less clutter for teachers. A chemistry teacher shouldn't have to scroll past every English and history assessment to find their own. Groups keep each teacher's list to the assessments that apply to them.
Room to pilot. Try a new common assessment with a handful of classrooms before rolling it out district-wide, without everyone else seeing a draft.
How the rules work
- No group means everyone. A shared assessment with no group selected stays visible to every teacher in the district, as before. Groups are optional.
- Being in any one group is enough. If an assessment is limited to several groups, a teacher in any of them can see it.
- Teachers who already have results keep access. If a teacher already has student results in an assessment, adding a group won't cut them off from their own students' data.
- Copies don't get around it. If a teacher who isn't in the group scans a copy of a restricted assessment's answer sheet, the sheet isn't scored and doesn't count against your district's scans. The teacher is told to ask their district administrator for access.
- Administrators see everything. District administrators always see every shared assessment, so they don't need to be in a group.
Visibility groups apply only to shared assessments. Teachers' own assessments and their personal item banks are already private to them.
Setting up visibility groups
For district administrators
- On your enterprise dashboard, click Manage groups on the Visibility groups card, then Add group for each team that needs its own assessments
- In Manage members, select teachers and choose Assign to visibility group to add many at once
- On each restricted shared assessment, choose the groups under Visible to. Leave it empty for anything every teacher should see
- Before deleting a group, read the warning. It lists the assessments that will become visible to every teacher once that group is gone
Start broad, then narrow
You don't need a group for every teacher on day one. Start with the assessments that need protecting, such as benchmarks and finals, and leave everything else visible to the whole district. Add groups as real needs come up.
The short version
Tags are for teachers. They help you find your questions and show you which topics your students are struggling with. Visibility groups are for district administrators. They let you share tests across the district while controlling who can see each one.
Bring PaperScorer to your district
Shared assessments and visibility groups come with Enterprise. Tell us about your district and we’ll walk you through it.
Request a district demo
