As is often the case with crises, the pandemic meant both an educational catastrophe but also an opportunity for transformation. The health and social emergencies, with their serious effects on students and their families (España, 2022; MINEDUC, 2020), prompted the search for new answers to tackle challenges that were not possible to address with existing tools. In Chile, socio-emotional learning was one area in which this duality, typical of crises, was shown: Students' socio-emotional well-being was especially hit (Ponce, Bellei & Viedma, 2020) at the same time that a new evaluation system, the Comprehensive Learning Diagnosis (DIA), was developed, making it possible for school communities to get timely evidence and act on it (Agencia de Calidad, 2022). Given its wide acceptance, this system, which also considers an academic component, seems likely to stay in Chilean education, leading to adjustments to the pre-existing national assessment system with its focus on cognitive skills and highstakes accountability for schools. In this case study, the authors will describe the DIA, starting with the context of the crisis in which it emerged, followed by its characteristics and preliminary results. They conclude with lessons learned to build a new formative assessment system and reshape--based on criterions of collaboration, trust and capacity building--the vertical relationship among the different levels of the educational system previously existing in Chile.