Work the goals, assessment and survey screens
Four tabs on a program, Goals, Assessments, Surveys and Evaluation, describe what the program intends to achieve and how it will be measured.
Three of the four can create the thing they are named after. None of the four can record a measurement of any kind, so every number on all four screens is structurally zero. Use this page to know which controls do something, and read What Programs can and cannot measure for why.
Goals
Create a goal
- Open the program's Goals tab.
- Press New Goal.
- Enter a Title, an optional Description, a Category and an optional Target Date.
- Press Create.
The box's placeholder reads "e.g., Academic, Social-Emotional".
PTRS accepts only Academic, Behavioral, Social, Physical, Emotional, Leadership and Creative, matched without regard to case. Social-Emotional is not one of them, so typing the field's own second suggestion is refused by name.
The title is capped at 300 characters. The description has no rule at all against a 2,000-character limit, so a longer one comes back as a plain server error rather than a field message, and the target date is not checked for validity before use.
What the five tiles mean
Total Goals, Achieved, In Progress, At Risk, Not Started.
Every goal is created with the status Not Started, and the one action that would change it is reachable from no screen. There is no status control on the card, in the expanded view, or anywhere else.
So:
| Tile | What it reads, always |
|---|---|
| Total Goals | the number of goals |
| Achieved | zero |
| In Progress | zero |
| At Risk | zero |
| Not Started | the number of goals |
PTRS also tracks a sixth status, Not Achieved, which the screen does not display and which nothing can set either.
What the expanded card shows
Expanding a goal reveals its description, its target date, its objectives with their success criteria, and a line reading how many KPI measurements were recorded.
All three are permanently absent, because no screen creates an objective, a success criterion or a KPI measurement. All three actions exist and none is reachable from any screen. The objectives block, the progress line, the tick-list of criteria and the KPI count line therefore never render on any goal.
A full charting component exists for this, with line, area and bar variants, a target reference line, a trend arrow with a percentage and an "On Target" or "Below Target" badge, plus a dashboard grid around it.
No screen anywhere in PTRS shows it. It is the module's one component with no place it appears; every other component in this module appears on at least one screen. It has no data to show either, because nothing writes a KPI measurement.
There is no way to edit or delete a goal. PTRS has no delete action for a goal, an objective, a criterion or a measurement.
Assessments
Create an assessment
- Open the Assessments tab and press New Assessment.
- Enter a Title, a Type, an optional Description and an optional Max Score.
- Set the Pre-Assessment and Post-Assessment switches. Pre is on by default.
- Press Create.
The Type box is free text and its placeholder reads "e.g., Academic, Social-Emotional, Health".
PTRS accepts only Quiz, Rubric, Observation, Portfolio, Peer Review, Self Assessment, Skills Check, Participation and Project. All three suggestions are refused, each named in the message.
The colour shown for the type badge is matched against the same five invalid names, so every badge you can actually create renders grey.
This action has no length check on the title against its 300-character limit, and Max Score has no bounds either.
What the four tiles mean
Total Assessments, Active, Total Results, Showing Improvement.
| Tile | What it reads |
|---|---|
| Total Assessments | the number of assessments |
| Active | the same number. Every assessment starts active and nothing can ever turn it off |
| Total Results | zero |
| Showing Improvement | zero |
The one action that would record a score for a child is reachable from no screen. No screen records a score. So Results always reads zero on every card, no pre or post average ever appears, and the improvement arrow never renders.
The pre/post comparison
PTRS pairs assessments by title and reports a pre average, a post average and an improvement figure, which is the post average minus the pre average, a raw score difference in the assessment's own units, not a percentage.
Two things stop it appearing even once results exist.
PTRS groups assessments by their title with "(Pre)" and "(Post)" stripped off, and returns the stripped title.
The screen matches that back with an exact comparison against the unstripped title.
So the naming PTRS expects you to use, "Reading (Pre)" and "Reading (Post)", produces a comparison keyed "Reading", which matches neither card and is never displayed. Giving both assessments the exact same title is the only naming that works.
There is no way to edit, deactivate or delete an assessment.
Surveys
Create a survey
- Open the Surveys tab and press New Survey.
- The Survey Builder panel opens inline. Enter a Survey Title and an optional description.
- Add questions with the buttons along the bottom: Short Text, Long Text, Multiple Choice, Checkboxes, Rating 1 to 5, Yes / No.
- Expand a question to type its text, edit its options and mark it required. Move questions with the up and down arrows; remove one with the bin.
- Press Create Survey.
The builder is the best-built control in this half: the questions are real, the options editor works, reordering within the builder works, and the whole thing is saved correctly.
The builder offers an Active tick box, ticked by default. Creating a survey has nowhere to carry that value, so it is ignored and every survey starts active regardless.
Unticking it produces an active survey anyway. Correcting a survey later does honour the field, but see the next note.
The builder supports editing an existing survey correctly, and the screen never actually opens it that way, so that path is never used. There is no edit control on a survey card either.
A survey can therefore never be retitled, re-questioned or turned off.
Nobody can answer a survey
The one action that would record a survey response is reachable from no screen. There is no fill-in view anywhere, no link to send to a parent, and no Parent Portal surface for it.
So Responses reads zero on every card and Total Responses reads zero permanently, and the action that would show a survey's results has nothing to return and no screen to return it to.
Evaluation
The Evaluation tab does not read or write anything. Its list is a fixed, empty value built into the screen itself, and the five inputs in its Create Evaluation dialog do not respond to typing. Create closes the dialog and does nothing else.
The screen is therefore permanently empty and its three tiles, Total Evaluations, Excellent or Good, Needs Attention, permanently read zero, whatever the database actually holds.
It is also the only Programs tab whose primary action has no role check: every other tab hides its create control from anyone without the management setting; this one shows New Evaluation to anybody who reaches the page.
For someone integrating directly
Everything the screens cannot do, PTRS can still do for someone who calls it directly. All of these work and no screen reaches any of them:
- moving a goal to In Progress, At Risk, Achieved or Not Achieved;
- adding an objective under a goal;
- setting an objective's current value, status and success criteria;
- recording a KPI measurement;
- defining a program's learning outcomes;
- recording a child's progress on an outcome;
- recording an assessment score for a child;
- submitting a survey response;
- recording a program evaluation.
Twelve of the thirteen actions in this area have no length checks at all, so the underlying storage is the only limit and an unguarded date is a plain server error. The one figure worth watching closely is a child's progress percentage, which is stored in a small box: 150 is stored happily and 1,000 is a plain server error.
Field-by-field rules: Curriculum and goal fields. Roles and reachability: Who can do what with curriculum, staffing, goals, assessments and surveys.
Where to go next
Checked against PTRS on 7 September 2026.