FAQs from the Help Desk

The first step to is to click on Getting Started on the TN-ELAP homepage and follow the process outlined there. If you still need assistance, you can email the Help Desk or select Training Request in the upper-right corner of the site.

You can also attend virtual TDOE hosted training sessions. Information about those sessions is provided through TDOE newsletters. If you aren’t receiving communications from the TDOE about trainings, please reach out to Extended Learning as soon as possible.

SWORPS also hosts virtual training sessions regularly. Those dates are listed on the TN-ELAP website’s Important Dates page.

Visit the Resource Center page at our TN-ELAP website and keep a lookout for User News posts announcing new content.

For SWORPS upcoming training dates, check the Important Dates page. You can also locate a downloadable version in the Resource Center.

You can! From any page on TN-ELAP.org, you can click Training Request in the upper right-hand corner. Next, complete the Help Desk Support Request form and click Submit. Make sure to include your full name, your ELAP username and email, contact information, and your grantee/site(s). The Help Desk will respond with scheduling options within 48 hours.

Yes, SWORPS offers office hours online throughout the entire program year, though the schedule does change during the summer break. Check our Important Dates page to stay up-to-date!

In order to use ELAP, you must first register for a new account. Follow the instructions in our New User Account Approval & Activation Process Guide to get registered

Visit the online Resource Center on our TN-ELAP website. And subscribe to User News alerts to get an email notification when new content is posted.

SWORPS does not offer professional development beyond what is required for compliance with grant data and evaluation activities. The organization that provides in-service for program staff is NTAC and their website is https://www.21stcclcntac.org/index.html.

Once your Site Coordinator or Project Director notifies you that you will be working with ELAP as part of your role, you will need to Register for an Account. You can do this by clicking Register in the upper right-hand corner of the TN-ELAP site.

You will enter the following information:

• your full name (First Middle Initial Last)
• a unique username,
• work email address,
• a unique password that you can remember,
• your Grantee and Grant Type,
• and the Sites/Centers that you will need access to.

Finally, you will click Register. If your registration is complete, you will receive the notification below:

After successfully registering, please contact your Project Director and provide them with your new account username and email address.

Provide your Project Director with the username/user email address and SWORPS will notify you via email when the account has been activated.

You can learn more about user account approval in the New User Account Approval & Activation Process guide posted in our online Resource Center, in the User Account section of the FAQ page, or by emailing the Help Desk your questions.

To reset your password for ELAP, click FORGOT PASSWORD on the ELAP login page. Enter the email address you used to register for ELAP and click EMAIL LINK. You will receive an email containing a link to reset your password. *Make sure to check your spam folder!*

If this doesn’t work, please email the Help Desk your full name, your username, your user email address, and pictures of any error messages you are seeing.

Every user account must be reactivated for the current school year after the annual System Refresh. Provide your full name, username, and user email address to your Project/Grant Director for approval and activation of your account. *Please remember – do not share your account password with anyone!* 

For more information on New & Returning Users, check out the New User Account Approval & Activation Process guide on the Resource Center page.

Notify your Project Director/Site Coordinator, so they can contact the Help Desk to request an account update. Once that update has been approved, you will receive an email notification from the Help Desk.

Every year, we reset the system for the new school year and TN-ELAP is unavailable to users for about 3 weeks. During this time, we reset all user accounts, update grantees and sites, unenroll participants, and archive the previous year’s information.

If you need access to data during this time, please contact the Help Desk.

It is scheduled annually from mid-July to early August and lasts about three weeks. The dates of the System Refresh are announced in advance on the TN-ELAP.org home page and the Important Dates page.

No, ELAP is offline during the System Refresh. You will need to document your data, so that it can be entered when the System Refresh is complete.

No! Data is never deleted during System Refresh. The data recorded for the previous school year (teacher email addresses, school attendance) is archived to allow for the current school year’s data to be entered.

No, any data entered for the new program year between July 1st and the date of the Annual Refresh will be deleted and would have to be reentered after the Refresh is over.

SWORPS provides an Enrollment Checklist to help with this! It can be downloaded from our Resource Center page.

It is also a good idea to host enrollment meetings with family members to ensure you’re capturing and entering all the required data points upon registration as opposed to waiting for the DQCs.

State Student ID’s are always seven numeric digits long. These are issued by the State of Tennessee and can be found in your local school system’s student management system (e.g., Skyward, Star Student). SWORPS does NOT have access to these systems. This data exchange is covered in the MOUs that grantees are required to have with the schools/districts they serve.

If you try to enroll or reenroll an attendee and they do not show up on the roster, complete the steps below before attempting to enroll them again.

1. Log out of ELAP
2. Completely close your browser (all window tabs).
3. Reopen your browser and clear the browser cache.
4. Return to www.tnelap.org and log back in to your ELAP account.
5. Enroll or reenroll your attendee and check that they are on the Roster.
6. If this still doesn’t add the attendee, contact the Help Desk and make sure to include the following information: Your name, your ELAP username, your Grantee/Site, a screenshot of the enrollment or reenrollment page, and a description of the issue you are having. *Do not include any FERPA protected data when contacting the Help Desk; instead, use UTK’s Vault. 

If you have two different students with the same Student ID, confirm that your student ID is the correct one and contact the Help Desk using UTK’s Vault and include the following information:

• Student Name(s)
• Student ID(s)
• Student Date of Birth
• Student Grantee/Site location

You can locate instructions on how to use UTK’s Vault by visiting our online Resource Center.

Attendees can only be removed by SWORPS staff. Project Directors are required to submit a request for deletion following the process listed below.

1. Login to ELAP at https://elap.sworps.tennessee.edu/Account/Login
2. Select Grantee/Site.
3. Click Center Reports
4. Run the Center 106 Participation by Date Range report from 7/1/24 to the current date. This report has time entered by minutes, student Name, and Student ID.
5. Highlight the attendees with zero time that you want unenrolled and save the document using your grantee/site name.
6. Login to UTK’s Vault. Instructions for using the UT Vault are on the ELAP Resource Center page.
7. Upload the document into UTK’s Vault and send it to the Help Desk (using the email address provided in the instructions). Make sure to include your username, user email address, grantee, and site.

7. SWORPS will confirm that the attendees have zero time and will unenroll those who were highlighted.

The only reason attendees should be removed is if they are enrolled in error or there’s a duplication. Please note that attendees should not be enrolled at all unless they have participation time in the program.

First, it is important to remember that students should not be enrolled UNTIL they have attended the program.

Attendees can only be removed by SWORPS staff. Project Directors are required to submit a request for deletion following the process listed below.

1. Login to ELAP at https://elap.sworps.tennessee.edu/Account/Login
2. Select Grantee/Site.
3. Click Center Reports
4. Run the Center 106 Participation by Date Range report from 7/1/24 to the current date. This report has time entered by minutes, student Name, and Student ID.
5. Highlight the attendees with zero time that you want unenrolled and save the document using your grantee/site name.
6. Login to UTK’s Vault. Instructions for using the UT Vault are on the ELAP Resource Center page.
7. Upload the document into UTK’s Vault and send it to the Help Desk (using the email address provided in the instructions). Make sure to include your username, user email address, grantee, and site.

7. SWORPS will confirm that the attendees have zero time and will unenroll those who were highlighted.

The only reason attendees should be removed is if they are enrolled in error or there’s a duplication. Please note that attendees should not be enrolled at all unless they have participation time in the program.

An unweighted GPA is the average grade on a 4.0 scale for all classes the student took, without regard to the difficulty of the coursework. (Conversely, a “weighted” GPA factors in various difficulty levels, e.g., Biology coursework compared to A.P. Biology coursework.)

As part of the GPRA measures, programs are required to collect unweighted Grade Point Average (GPA) for students currently enrolled in grades 6 through 12.

These data are entered twice for each participant during the program year. Data entry deadlines can be found on the Important Dates page or the printable Important Dates handout located on our Resource Center page.

*Throughout the program year, when enrolling participants in grades 7 – 12, you will need to enter their final unweighted GPA from the previous program year.

*At the end of the program year, you will need to enter the final unweighted GPA from the current program year for participants in grades 6 – 12.

The GPA button can be located by scrolling to the bottom of the Attendees Screen. Clicking the button will take you to the Grade Point Average page where you can begin entering participants’ GPA data.

SWORPS has created a tool to help you calculate unweighted GPAs for participants. Visit the Resource Center to download the yellow GPA Calculator Tool. Contact the Help Desk if you have any questions, or if you have a different grading situation that’s not included in the GPA Calculator Tool.

No. Students in 6th grade do not need previous year GPA entered. Make sure you leave the space empty.

SWORPS has created a tool to help you calculate unweighted GPAs for participants. Visit the Resource Center to download the yellow GPA Calculator Tool. Contact the Help Desk if you have any questions, or if you have a different grading situation that’s not included in the GPA Calculator Tool.

All 21st CCLC Cohort 2019 are required to complete the APR for the 2023-24 school year as part of receiving funds. Contact the Help Desk to obtain the appropriate reports needed for the APR process.

Participants who are currently enrolled in grades 3rd through 8th. This applies to any participant who attended a Tennessee Public or Charter school the previous school year.

For up-to-date deadlines, please visit the Important Dates page on the TN-ELAP website.

The four performance levels for State Assessment are Below/Level 1, Approaching/Level 2, Met Expectations/Level 3, and Exceeded Expectations/Level 4.

By Tennessee law, if independently homeschooled students opt to take a test other than the TCAP, test results “shall be provided to the parent-teacher, the director of schools and the state board of education; So the test would need to be standardized, administered by a professional testing service within 30 days of the statewide assessments, and the results provided to the LEA for review” (SOURCE: Home Schooling in Tennessee. Retrieved Oct-1-2021).

If a participant did not take an assessment last year, navigate to the Attendees Screen and select the Assessments button. On the State Assessments page, you will select the correct participant and then select Score Unavailable from the dropdown menu. SAVE when you are finished.

Assessment data travels with the student and should be available from the school or district.

If a student moved from out of state, mark their previous State Assessment score as Unavailable. The GPRA measures do not compare out-of-state and in-state assessment scores.

If your school/district doesn’t implement ISS, select NOT AVAILABLE. Please be aware, this can vary from school to school within a system. Confirm with your site admin before entering this data.

The Absence & ISS button can be located by scrolling to the bottom of the Attendees Screen. Clicking the button will take you to the Absence & ISS page where you can begin entering attendees’ data.

Data entry deadlines can be found on the Important Dates page or the printable Important Dates handout located on our Resource Center page.

Required data can be collected from several sources: from participants’ family via enrollment forms, from participants’ report cards, and from the school system your grantee serves.

The Early Literacy button can be located by scrolling to the bottom of the Attendees Screen. Clicking the button will take you to the Literacy Screener page where you can begin entering participants’ Early Literacy Data.

Data entry deadlines can be found on the Important Dates page or in the printable Important Dates handout located on our Resource Center page.

Participants in grades K – 2nd grade need an Early Literacy Score entered.

You will enter Fall (administered August 1 – September 1) and Spring (administered April 10 – May 14) Nationally Normed Percentile Score from one of the seven state approved screeners. Those screeners are:

• aimswebPlus
• DIBBLES 8th Edition
• easyCBM
• Fast Bridge Suite/FAST1
• iReady + iReady Early Learning Tasks
• Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)
• STAR Early Literacy/Reading

If a student received a different screener, please select Other Non-State Approved Assessment.

The easyCBM screener provides national normed percentile scores for the three individual subtests administered during each window. These scores will need to be averaged to determine the scores to enter into ELAP. Your district may be able to provide you with the average of the three subtests or you may have to calculate the average to enter into ELAP.

Site Staff should have electronic or paper sign in/sign out documents and the data that comes from those. The exact arrival and departure times are critical pieces of information.

Currently, you can look at the Base Participation report by a single date or by a range of dates and can be narrowed to a single attendee.

In the ELAP database, go to the Attendees Screen page and select the participants with the incorrect data entered. Next, select Add Participation for Selected Attendees. On the Add Participation screen, enter the date of the participation entry error and then enter 0 for the minutes participated and save. You may now enter the participation on the correct date. Make sure to save your data entry.

Use the Base Participation Report in Center Reports to confirm your data entry.

If the date is correct, but there was an incorrect amount of time entered, the correct time can be saved over the old information entered as long as the same names and activities are selected.

You can also use the Participation Editor to correct that information. From the Attendees Screen page, select the participants with the incorrect data entered and scroll to the bottom of the page to select Edit Participation.

On the Participation Editor screen, scroll down to the calendar menu dropdown and enter the date of the participation time that needs editing. Once the editor populates, you can then enter the correct time in the column labeled Minutes (in green) for each participant. You can also use this screen to update the Program (AM/PM/Summer) if there are any data entry errors in that category.

Use the Base Participation Report in Center Reports to confirm your data entry.

Monthly Participation Report (102) is a great report to look at the big picture of the site during a month. Use the first day of the month you want to look at. Then use the Participation by Date Range (106) report for greater details. Either of the Base Participation Reports (101 and 100) are also helpful. A word of caution, these reports can be hundreds of pages long so be thoughtful on what date ranges you want to review.

No. Attendees with participation time in the ELAP system cannot be removed or deleted. SWORPS only removes attendees with zero participation.

Please remember, if an attendee moves to a Tennessee public or charter school, you’re still accountable for the data. Best practice is to put part of the data burden on the families and let them know data expectations up front during the orientation meetings with family members.

There are no “program goals” related to the number of days open; however, it is a requirement that the program be open 180 days during the year.

The Teacher Survey opens in early March and closes on May 31st. Exact dates can be found on the Important Dates page.

The Family Survey opens in early February and closes on May 31st. Exact dates can be found on the Important Dates page.

The Teacher Survey dates can be found on the Important Dates page.

The Teacher Survey reports typically are issued by the end of August and are sent to Project Directors. Reach out to your project director for your reports.

The Family Survey reports are typically issued by the end of August and are sent to Project Directors. Reach out to your project director for your reports.

The Student Survey reports are typically issued by the end of August and are sent to Project Directors. Reach out to your project director for your reports.

You can email the Help Desk for the current count of completed surveys. We receive updated totals every Monday. We are not able to tell you which teachers have completed the survey.

You can email the Help Desk for the current count of completed surveys. We receive updated totals every Monday. We are not able to tell you which families have completed the survey.

Yes, sites must have a minimum of 5 responses to receive a report.

Choose the grantee then any current site for which you need a report, choose the report, then choose the date range for which you need the report. If you no longer see the site that you need listed, contact the ELAP Help Desk.

If this occurs, we ask that you contact the ELAP Help Desk. This can indicate an issue that a system administrator needs to investigate, such as duplicate enrollments or overlapping dates.

Participants are now tracked by hour bands. From the options on the homepage, click Center Reports. Once the report page loads, scroll down to the GPRA Participation Report (#125) and click View Report. You can run the GPRA Participation Report for current and previous program years for comparison purposes.

For the base participation, run the Base Participation by Activity (#109). Then, download it as a .csv file. There will be many unnecessary columns; delete all columns except columns N, P, AD, AE, AS, and AU. That will give you: Name, DOB, Activity Category, Activity, Date, and Minutes

Reports with Teacher Survey results, Family Survey results and Related Performance Indicator data entered in ELAP each program year are compiled and sent directly to programs late August/early September. Reach out to your Project Director.

Not program year 2024-2025,  but we are revising the reports to provide project level data moving forward.

To ensure you can locate the Local Evaluation Form when you need it, consider saving the link below to your browser bar.

Local Evaluation Form

No, it will not save your progress. Make sure to have all of the relevant information handy when you begin the report.