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Remote Security Threats Are Real: 4 Steps to Keep Your District Safe

With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, many school districts around the country find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented shift from the routine of a normal spring on campus to a largely remote work and distance learning experience. This crisis has revealed remarkable strength: teachers, administrators, and other essential school personnel are showing creativity and tenacity as they continue serving students remotely, while students, parents, grandparents, and guardians rise to the occasion from home. And behind the scenes are tireless district technology teams that make it all possible.

Even under normal circumstances, school districts face an increasing risk of data breaches; EdWeek reports that the number of K-12 cyber attacks more than doubled from 2018 to 2019. And as the far-reaching ripple effects of the current pandemic become clear, many districts will find that this crisis only exacerbates those vulnerabilities. According to Doug Levin of the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, devices and networks that are not secured are at the center of increased security threats. With staff, teachers, and students working remotely, the risk increases.

Another source of increased risk: regular cybersecurity policies are easily overlooked in the midst of changed routines. And with near-constant news alerts related to the crisis, users are more likely to trust a phishing email that promises timely information, or requires immediate attention or action and demands urgency. All of these factors lead to greater risk for cyber criminals to capitalize on uncertainty and lack of ordinary structure.

But there’s good news, too!

Many of the best cybersecurity measures are simple and possibly already in place. And taking the time to address cybersecurity now means that, on the other side of this pandemic, your district can return to a normalcy that is more secure and more flexible than ever before ― an opportunity worth seizing! Here are a few best practices to keep your district “cybersafe.”

1. Train Students and Staff

According to Amy McLaughlin, cybersecurity director for the Consortium for School Networking, the first thing a district should do to ensure cybersafety (a term she recommends over “cybersecurity,” which may sound too techy to some users) is train staff to be on the lookout for potential problems. School districts have an opportunity to use the present moment to make this a regular part of their staff’s functioning. As you establish protocols for remote work, include regular reminders — what McLaughlin calls “an ongoing marketing campaign” — for staff and students alike to report every possible phishing scam or suspicious activity.

And make it easy for staff and students to report anything suspicious. Enabling a one-click reporting mechanism can help encourage reporting. If the one-click functionality also includes an automated message that appears after someone clicks, that is an opportunity for you to use that message to remind staff and students how their actions are helping your district stay safe. Positive reinforcement will go a long way in encouraging the reporting of suspicious emails and websites.

Consider testing staff and students by using phishing simulations and sharing out the results to further raise awareness. For example, if 25% of users failed a simulation, that lets your community know to strive for even greater vigilance.

See: Cyberattacks Force Schools to Bolster Online Security

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Cyber Attack at Springland City Schools: Walk a day in the shoes of an IT director working to make sure his district is ready for whatever comes its way.

2. Maximize Security

Ensure that, whatever programs your district is using, your users are making the most of the security features that are already available to them. EdWeek tells the story of one district that ― only after a significant data breach ― moved to a cloud-based email system with two-factor authentication to avoid further compromise. Proactively check to be sure that you are requiring the most secure options, such as two-factor authentication, and make cybersecurity best practices part of your district’s routine. Educate staff on these practices so that they understand why they are required to regularly change passwords, and make district-wide security practices a priority before an attack makes it a priority for you.

See: Cyberattacks Force Schools to Bolster Online Security

3. Maintain Backups

Regular backups should be a part of every district’s protocol, now more than ever. And backups should be encrypted and segregated and secured at a site that is easily accessible (for example, a vendor that can ensure security and availability of the backup files). Having takes or files secured by a trusted vendor helps keep them separate from the rest of the network. So, in the event of an attack, backups won’t be affected.

In the wake of a ransomware attack, compromised backups limit your district’s ability to recover. Jason Dial, a superintendent whose district experienced an attack, says it’s wise to be ready: “If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it’s going to happen.” Being prepared for a quick return to normal makes the difference between an inconvenience and a disaster.

See: Cyberattacks Force Schools to Bolster Online Security

4. Beware of the Seemingly Simple

A data breach often comes down to just one person clicking on just one suspicious link or attachment. McLaughlin notes that one of the greatest dangers to school cybersafety is a classic phishing attack, often an email that requests information or money under the pretense of an emergency. She’s backed up by Paul Lipman, of BullGuard cybersecurity, who says, “We’re seeing a rise in phishing attacks as a result of the rapid move to remote working for a large number of people.” Remind remote workers and learners to approach their emails with healthy skepticism. When in doubt, report!

See:

Coronavirus Compounds K-12 Cybersecurity

How to Protect Your Organization from Security Threats amid the Rise in Telecommuters

We’re being reminded regularly that the simplest measures can be the most effective: wash your hands well, cover your mouth when you cough, and wash your hands again. The same principle goes far for districts feeling overwhelmed by the need to keep sensitive data safe in an unprecedented, remote situation. Simple measures can be very effective, and their usefulness will remain long after the crisis has passed.

Learn about digital security safeguards built into Frontline Education solutions, and our commitment to helping you keep your district’s data secure. See how we can help

3 Summer Tips to Ease Substitute Teacher Management

At the end of each school year, — and what’s best to tackle with fresh eyes in August make sure to your substitute management program

Review the Past School Year

Take a moment to look back and use harness insights from the past year to reflect, plan and make next year even more successful. Explore your employee absence data and ask the following questions:

  • How often were teachers out of the classroom, and for what reasons?
  • How does your school district’s data compare to national norms?
  • Which employees had perfect attendance? How can you acknowledge and thank these staff members for their commitment?
  • What can you do to promote fewer of these absences next year?

Don’t forget to look at the other side of the employee absence coin, too — your substitute pool. Which substitutes hardly accepted any jobs this year, despite being called? Should any substitutes be removed from your list? Have this data in mind for the next step: preparing your substitute program for the upcoming year.

Prepare Your Substitute Teacher Pool

With insights from your absence management software in hand, prepare your substitutes for next year. 

First, communicate with your substitutes. Start by sending letters of reasonable assurance and other necessary documents to discuss the upcoming year, if these haven’t already been distributed.

Then, look for ways to cultivate a healthy substitute pool. With substitute shortages plaguing schools from California to Connecticut, it’s more important than ever to have engaged, active substitutes ready to work in your district. So, if your list of substitutes is sparser than you’d like, focus on recruiting and, just as importantly, retention.

Wrap up the school year on a positive note by getting in touch with those substitutes who worked a lot over the past year and received glowing feedback from your full-time staff.

And don’t forget to reach out to substitutes who haven’t been taking jobs — maybe you can find ways to encourage them to work more next year. For example, offering training on how they can be more effective in the classroom can help prevent substitutes from feeling overwhelmed or under-confident. These trainings don’t have to get in the way of your summer plans, either — high-quality online training courses are available so substitutes can learn on their own time.

Get Your Systems Ready for Summer

Technology should make your work easier. Set up your district’s systems now, so you don’t have to worry about making changes throughout the summer. For example, in Frontline Absence & Time, you may want to do the following:

  • Adjust your system to reflect 4-day workweeks and allow your employees to create absences for modified work schedules.
  • Add a summer school location and set it up with the necessary staff
  • Roll over your employees’ absence reason balances
  • Inactivate substitutes (or those not involved in summer school)
  • Set an end date (and “Return to Previous Assignment” date, if needed) for users who don’t work a full year

The more you can automate your work with solutions like ours, the more time you can reclaim for yourself — meaning you can head out for those long weekends knowing that everything that needed to be handled right away has been put into motion.

Effective Dating & Conditional Workflows in Position Management

Behind the scenes at any school district, there are playmakers at work — including business officials who keep the gears moving with systems and processes. While tried and true methods get the job done, innovations save time and foster higher-level strategy for HR, Finance, and Payroll teams. 

Those professionals focus on Human Capital Management (HCM) — an HR practice of creating an environment that supports people and optimizes their output based on their knowledge, skills, assets, preferences, and needs. Within that practice is position management, which allows roles to be separated from people.

The Four Stages of a Position Management Plan

Without position management, vacancies can be a surprise and often go unfilled until it becomes an emergency. HR and Finance often find themselves at odds between yesterday’s hiring needs and today’s budget constraints.

With a plan, the group can become strategists, advisors, and high-level playmakers. A quality plan serves as a bird’s eye view into the personnel landscape at your district and supports proactive, intentional work. A good position management plan includes:

  1. Organizational mapping
  2. Designating information at the position level
  3. Planning and forecasting with effective dating
  4. Using conditional workflows for approvals, vacancies, and requests

Organizational Mapping

This means to dive into data to figure out:

  • How many employees work in the district, and where they work
  • Which employees plan to vacate their role temporarily or permanently (planned leave, retirement, etc.)
  • Where those vacancies are and where the budget can support the roles
  • What the recruiting effort will look like to maintain quality staff in the district

It allows you to look ahead to plan, prepare, and execute to keep your staff strong and full next year and in year’s to come.

Designating Information At The Position Level

This means treating roles as separate from the individuals who hold them at that moment; after all, people move on. You wouldn’t field a team without first communicating what each player must accomplish to win, right? You’ll see personnel gaps, opportunities, and needs exist. When you start taking addressing those gaps, opportunities, and needs — moving and shaking — you need two key processes in place to make it work: effective dating and conditional workflows.

Planning and Forecasting With Effective Dating

Effective dating allows you to work in the past, present, and future. Without it, the only personnel information available to you is what is true on that very day. This means that your hands are tied — or you’ll be putting in a lot of extra hours — if a stakeholder asks for data and stats from prior years, or projections into coming years. It means that you don’t have the full scope of employee data at your fingertips for your own efforts to get strategic at a high level. Old spreadsheets pile up and manual analysis grows tedious.

Effective dating helps you be proactive in managing the fluidity of positions in a school as teachers take on different roles throughout the year, such as a sports coach, club leader, or grade team lead.

Add-on roles like these mean that stipends are tacked onto salaries at different variables and timeframes throughout the year. And of course, sometimes unexpected staffing issues pop up. With effective dating, you can easily pivot when a last-minute change happens.

Looking into the future can be even more important than seeing the past. With a clear view of the organizational map and position-level designations, the grasp of HR and Finance on personnel needs grows as well. With effective dating, you can date a vacancy that you know is coming (planned leave, retirement, etc.) and begin the approval process for hiring long before it becomes a scramble to fill the classroom.

Add-on roles like these mean that stipends are tacked onto salaries at different variables and timeframes throughout the year. And of course, sometimes unexpected staffing issues pop up.

Looking into the future can be even more important than seeing the past. With a clear view of the organizational map and position-level designations, the grasp of HR and Finance on personnel needs grows as well. With effective dating, you can date a vacancy that you know is coming (planned leave, retirement, etc.) and begin the approval process for hiring long before it becomes a scramble to fill the classroom.

Conditional Workflows for Approvals, Vacancies, and Requests

So, let’s say you begin that approval process for hiring. What does it look like? There’s the old way, and then there’s the more efficient way, supported by conditional workflows. In the old way, a seasoned HR professional, Amy, has been manually processing approvals for years:

  1. She prints the form
  2. She walks the halls over the course of a few days, seeking signatures from the principal, Finance officer, and department chair
  3. She catches the Finance officer on day one, department chair on day two, and principal on day three (after an email thread, of course)
  4. She stays late a few days during the week, finishing up work that didn’t get done during the day

It’s not that Amy doesn’t want to say hello to colleagues or get a few steps in — it’s just that time-consuming, unsuccessful laps in the hallway pour her valuable time down the drain. She’d rather choose where to take that walk — say, in her own neighborhood after the workday is done.

A Better Way

With conditional workflows, approvals become part of an automated process. Each stakeholder in the role is included in the workflow and receives an alert when it’s time to review the role, materials, and give approval. HR and Finance are connected, with all the pertinent information in a shared space to work from, together. And as for Amy’s hellos, well, they feel a lot better when the work is getting done.

A strong position management plan in place gives time and power back to HR, Finance, and Payroll professionals. Vacancies can be identified and filled early with a position management plan, and conditional workflows support the approval process so that the right hire can begin with confidence before it’s an emergency.

Conditional workflows make room for easy human interaction by connecting all the people in the hiring process. In fact, they do a few things:

  • Break down repetitive tasks into a logical sequence
  • Help HR and Finance process data more easily
  • Eliminate bottlenecks in recruiting, so stellar candidates are hired and onboarded faster

A strong position management plan in place gives time and power back to HR, Finance, and Payroll professionals. Vacancies can be identified and filled early with a position management plan, and conditional workflows support the approval process so that the right hire can begin with confidence before it’s an emergency.

The right process enablement software that supports organizational mapping, role-based effective dating and details, and proactive recruiting, are powerful tools. It connects HR and Finance in invaluable ways to turn those professionals from number-crunchers and hallway-walkers to advisors and project champions.

Frontline can help you implement a position management plan at your district. Learn more here.

4 Steps for Managing Trauma-Informed Classrooms

Take a random walk through any school on any day and you may see challenging behaviors like these:

  • Sean walks into class with an “attitude.” He is argumentative with peers and fails to comply with adult requests.
  • When his classroom becomes too loud, Ahmed will suddenly bolt from the room.
  • Alyssa is generally well-behaved, but when asked questions by the teacher in front of the class, will shut down and not respond.

These surface behaviors are easily observed. However, what may remain hidden from the observer (and perhaps from the teachers of Sean, Alyssa and Ahmed, is that each of these students engage in these behaviors as a fight-flight-or-freeze survival response triggered by their unique history of complex trauma[1][2].

Definition of Complex Trauma

Complex trauma can occur when a child is repeatedly exposed to adverse experiences, such as abuse, neglect and dysfunctional family interactions[3]. When incidents of trauma are frequent or ongoing, the child may develop chronically heightened stress levels that can be expressed in various ways, like aggression, inattention, hyperactivity, depression, or anxiety[4]. A danger is that educators might fail to realize that these challenging behaviors are trauma-related and instead punish the student for seemingly willful misconduct.

What is a trauma-informed school?

Many schools across the nation have discovered that substantial numbers of their students have experienced long-term negative effects of trauma and are taking steps to create supportive, non-threatening learning environments and to provide services for these learners[5]. These “trauma-informed schools” usually have these three things in common:

  • Training their educators to recognize signs of trauma
  • Encouraging teachers to structure their classrooms to minimize potential stress triggers
  • Providing additional therapeutic supports such as counseling to students most impacted by complex trauma
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Overview of trauma-informed schools and related free resources from the Administration for Children & Families

Using RTI/MTSS to help students who have experienced trauma

The good news is that schools that adopt a 3-tiered model of RTI/MTSS for behavior have already assembled at least some of the practices necessary to successfully support students with complex trauma, such as:

  • Teaching and reinforcing expected behaviors
  • Employing school-wide behavioral screeners and teacher referrals to identify these students
  • Providing an array of positive behavioral and social-emotional interventions.

By far the most important setting for identifying and supporting those with complex trauma, however, is the general-education classroom (RTI/MTSS Tier 1). When chronically stressed students encounter demanding academic settings, there is an increased probability that these school environments will trigger maladaptive fight-flight-or-freeze behaviors. However, teachers may have only limited knowledge of these students’ background—and not realize that their behaviors are a reaction to the effects of complex trauma.

Trauma-informed practices for managing classrooms

A proactive solution is for instructors to adopt a “universal” foundation of positive routines, instructional practices and communication strategies in their classrooms, one that promotes a positive environment for all learners—while most benefiting students with complex trauma[6].

In the trauma-informed classroom, the teacher:

  1. Promotes positive interactions with all students
  2. Establishes a predictable, non-threatening learning environment
  3. Encourages learners to communicate their needs and exercise autonomy
  4. Ensures that the disciplining of individual students is fair and focused on teaching and reinforcing expected behaviors.

Steps you can take

These strategies are adapted from ideas previously posted on interventioncentral.org.

1. Promote positive interactions

Students with complex trauma often have a history of problematic relationships with adults that results in their adopting a guarded or defensive stance during teacher interactions. Instructors can work to overcome this relationship barrier by employing a range of positive communication strategies to convey student acceptance and to foster interpersonal connections.

Promote Positive Interactions: Teacher Strategies

As students arrive at the start of class, stand at the door and briefly greet each student by name. This modest effort has been shown to substantially increase student attention and focus.

To increase desired behavior, praise the student in clear, specific terms whenever the student engages in that behavior. Praise statements should clearly describe the noteworthy behavior singled out for praise. (NOTE: Teachers who routinely use praise statements tend to be viewed as friendly and caring by their students!)

To keep relationships with a student on a positive footing, set the goal of having at least three positive interactions for each disciplinary interaction. Positive teacher-student interactions can vary in format: for example, greeting, praise, conversation, smile, thumbs-up sign. By maintaining at least a 3:1 ratio between relationship-enhancing vs. disciplinary interactions, you shift the odds in your favor that your target student will view you as fair and caring.

To increase the likelihood that the student will comply with your requests, state them in positive terms (e.g., “John, I can help you just as soon as you are back in your seat.”) rather than in negative terms (e.g., “John, I can’t help you unless you are sitting in your seat.”).

One strategy to increase positive behaviors is to “catch the student being good” with regular doses of “scheduled attention”:

  1. Decide on a fixed-interval schedule to provide attention (e.g., every 8 minutes).
  2. At each interval, observe the student.
  3. If the student is engaged in appropriate behaviors at that moment, provide a brief dose of positive attention (e.g., verbal praise; non-verbal praise such as thumbs-up; brief positive conversation; encouragement). If the student is off-task or not behaving appropriately, briefly redirect the student to task and return immediately to instruction until the next scheduled-attention interval.

Jump-start a more positive pattern of interaction with a student through the “two-by-ten” intervention. With this time-efficient strategy, you commit to having a positive two-minute conversation with the student at least once per day across 10 consecutive school days. The active ingredient in this intervention is regular, positive teacher attention.

[ctt template=”9″ link=”3R5NX” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]The active ingredient in behavior intervention is regular, positive #teacher attention. [/ctt]

 

2. Establish a predictable and safe learning environment

A common behavioral trigger for the complex-trauma student is that he or she is suddenly and unexpectedly faced with an adverse academic task. The teacher’s goal is to minimize unpleasant surprises for students during the academic day, as well as to teach learners appropriate coping responses when the unexpected does occur.

Establish a Safe Learning Environment: Teacher Strategies

Establish clear routines to deal with common classroom activities. These routines might include start-of-class “bell-ringer” activities, assigning and collecting homework and classwork, transitioning students efficiently between activities, etc.

Provide the student with an academic agenda or schedule for the class period or school day, to include instructional activities, independent assignments, and other tasks to be covered during the period, as well as their approximate duration. Preview with the student to prepare for upcoming activities.

A frequent trigger for behavior problems is that the student lacks the skills necessary to do the assigned schoolwork. To verify instructional match, you can:

  1. Inventory the target student’s academic skills.
  2. Adjust assignments or provide additional academic assistance as needed to ensure that the student is appropriately challenged but not overwhelmed by the work.

Assign a peer helper who is willing and able to repeat and explain directions to the student and assist in starting an assignment.

Permit the student additional time to complete in-class activities or assignments. (For longer assignments, you can announce to students at the start the amount of extra time available for those who need it.)

Provide samples of successfully completed academic items (e.g., math computation or word problems) or exemplars (e.g., samples of well-written paragraphs or essays) for the student to refer to when working independently.

Promote student motivation on worksheets and independent assignments by presenting easier items first and more challenging items later.

 

3. Encourage student autonomy

During academic tasks, students with a history of trauma will be less prone to triggered misbehavior when they are encouraged to voice their learning needs and to exercise choice in aspects of their academic tasks.

Encourage Autonomy: Teacher Strategies

Students find it motivating to have opportunities to choose how they structure or carry out their academic tasks. You can allow choice on any of a variety of dimensions of a classroom activity, such as where the activity takes place; whom the student works with; what materials to work with (e.g., choosing a book from several options); when to begin or end the activity; or how long to engage in the activity.

To accommodate the highly active student, negotiate appropriate outlets for movement (e.g., allowing the student to pace at the back of the classroom during a lesson).

Sometimes misbehavior is an attempt by the student to engineer a break from an academic task. You can choose an alternative method for the student to use to communicate that he or she would like a brief break, such as requesting that break verbally or pulling out a color-coded break card. Of course, the student will also require clear guidelines on how long the requested break will last and what activities are acceptable for the student to engage in during that break.

Teach the student steps to follow when stuck during independent work: e.g., “If I don’t understand what I am reading, (1) slow my reading; (2) focus full attention on the reading; (3) underline unfamiliar words and try to figure them out from context.”

 

4. Ensure fair discipline

Learners with complex trauma may have experienced discipline at home or school as capricious, unpredictable, and largely punitive. In contrast, the trauma-informed educator has the goal in any disciplinary conversation of reteaching behavioral expectations; providing these students with whatever tools and supports might be necessary for behavioral success; and ensuring that they perceive any disciplinary consequences as fair and transparent.

Ensure Fair Discipline: Teacher Strategies

Students must be explicitly taught behavioral expectations before they can be held accountable for those behaviors. You can model positive behaviors, provide examples and non-examples of appropriate behaviors to clarify understanding, have your student practice those behaviors with instructor feedback, and consistently acknowledge and praise the student for successfully displaying positive behaviors.

Consider adopting a continuum of ascending positive-behavior responses when problem student behaviors occur — e.g., (1) give a non-verbal reminder; (2) give a verbal reminder; (3) offer assistance or modify the task; (4) provide a safe space for de-escalation.

Soon after any significant in-class incident of student non-compliance, defiance, or confrontation, make a point to meet with the student individually to discuss the behavioral incident, identify the triggers in the classroom environment that may have led to the problem, and brainstorm with the student to create a plan to prevent the reoccurrence of such an incident. Throughout this conference, maintain a supportive, respectful tone.

 

Your efforts have impact!

The lesson that trauma-informed schools can teach us is that teachers can take proactive steps to make their classrooms accepting and supportive havens for children and youth with complex trauma. And research shows[8] that instructors also achieve better academic outcomes across all learners when they interact positively with students, make learning a safe and engaging endeavor, promote student autonomy, and treat discipline as an opportunity to reteach and reinforce expected behaviors.

1 Cavanaugh, B. (2016). Trauma-informed classrooms and schools. Beyond Behavior, 25(2), 41-46.

2 Rosenbaum-Nordoft, C. (2018). Building teacher capacity for trauma-informed practice in the inclusive elementary school classroom. Early Childhood Education, 45(1), 3-12.

3 Cavanaugh, B. (2016). Trauma-informed classrooms and schools. Beyond Behavior, 25(2), 41-46.

4 Cavanaugh, B. (2016). Trauma-informed classrooms and schools. Beyond Behavior, 25(2), 41-46.

5 Howell, P. B., Thomas, S., Sweeney, D., & Vanderhaar, J. (2019). Moving beyond schedules, testing and other duties as deemed necessary by the principal: The school counselor’s role in trauma informed practices. Middle School Journal, 50(4), 26-34.

6 Cavanaugh, B. (2016). Trauma-informed classrooms and schools. Beyond Behavior, 25(2), 41-46.

7 Mendler, A. N. (2000). Motivating students who don’t care. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.

8 Chafouleas, S. M., Johnson, A. H., Overstreet, S., & Santos, N. M. (2016). Toward a blueprint for trauma-informed service delivery in schools. School Mental Health, 18, 144-162.

A Teacher, a Superintendent, a Special Ed Director: 4 Real-life Stories About Equity in Education

Coming from a small town in the not-Philadelphia-and-not-Pittsburgh part of Pennsylvania, the idea of equity in education wasn’t top-of-mind for me when I was a high school student. Nor was the whole idea that some kids might not have the same kind of opportunities as others.

Sure, some came from families with more money than others, but the faces in the hallways were mostly shades of white. And if college wasn’t on the horizon for some, that seemed to be more a matter of choice than of access.

We know, of course, that it’s far more complex than that – a myriad of factors determine what doors are open to students. Everything from family life to school funding to systemic racial issues all play a role in determining who does and doesn’t go on to achieve that sparkly American dream.

That’s why Frontline’s podcast, Field Trip, released a short series on equity. Four episodes, four educators, four stories about working for equity in schools. I hope you enjoy them.

Part 1: One District, Two Communities

How does a district strive for equity when it serves two distinct, racially diverse communities?

 

Part 2: Fifty Years Later

15 years after Brown v. Board of Education, schools in Louisiana were often still segregated in practice. Here’s the true story of one teacher’s experience, and how it impacted her in the following decades.

 

Part 3: Special Education is an Equity Issue

Racial equality is an important factor in ensuring every student has access to the general education curriculum. But achieving equity in special education goes deeper yet.

 

Part 4: Equity for English Learners

2020 was tough on everyone, especially leaders, teachers, and students, but English Learners faced additional hurdles as teachers and families often struggled to communicate.

 

Stories worth sharing.

Every other week, Field Trip releases new stories highlighting the work of educators and district leaders across the country who are moving mountains to serve students and support teachers. Get ‘em delivered to your phone:

 

Best Practices for Service Documentation


 

 

In the world of IDEA, documentation is a requirement. However, documentation practices in school districts have no universal standard. This can lead to major problems both for students and districts ― like due process hearings and issues with continuity of service. So, in the absence of universal standards, your district should create best practices of its own. Here is some information to help you get started.

School-based health services documentation serves multiple purposes. Each purpose must be examined to create a comprehensive approach to best practices.

The primary role of documentation is to monitor and assess student progress, both to communicate with other therapists and present to parents and school administrators. Documentation must also adhere to state-specific Medicaid requirements to support billing. Finally, in a due process hearing, consistent and thorough documentation is vital to support decisions made toward a student’s special education treatments and determination.

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As you examine service documentation practices in your school district, these questions can guide your strategy:

  • Does my district have standards for therapy documentation? Do all therapy groups practice the documentation standards?
  • Does the documentation in my district meet the requirements for IDEA? Does it meet license requirements within each scope of practice?
  • Does the documentation in my district meet the requirements for Medicaid billing? Will the documentation fully support the district in case of an audit?
  • Is there a central location for all of our service documentation? Can case managers access this information during IEP or other special education meetings? Can administrators access this documentation as needed for due process or other legal proceedings?
  • Is there any impediment to implementing a universal standard to documentation in my district? How can I incentivize therapists to adopt these practices?

Documentation standards across common school-based therapy types

The main therapy associations all provide standards for documentation within their specialty. Examining the varying standards helps administrators create a unified approach to documentation in their school districts.

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the base requirements for documentation include:

  • The purpose of the session
  • The date and start time
  • Progress monitoring data, including the level of assistance, the student progress towards the goal for the session and any recommendations for future services[1]

The American Physical Therapy Association and American Occupational Therapy Association include the same requirements as ASHA but expand their standards to include:

  • Cancellation documentation
  • Specific identification of interventions
  • Current patient impairment or disability status
  • Communication or consultation with other stakeholders
  • A signature, title and license number
  • In addition, it is recommended the documentation be completed as close to the session as possible[2]

The common theme for documentation in all practices is the development of a SOAP, or a comment that includes Subjective (S), Objective (O), Assessment (A) and Plan (P) data, to allow other therapists to quickly grasp the student’s progress and current status.

Medicaid documentation requirements

Medicaid documentation requirements can vary within each state, but generally include:

  • The student’s identifying information
  • The date of the service
  • Service location
  • Procedure code
  • Diagnostic code
  • A description of the session
  • Signatures[3]

The below table shows the various requirements around service documentation and Medicaid requirements surrounding IDEA documentation in sample states:

Benefits of a single, central documentation system

Documentation is only as useful as it is accessible. If we revisit the primary goal of documentation ― to assess student progress ― the means of delivering this information to other therapists and administrators or parents is best handled in a universal manner.

Why?

Caseloads shift. Students change schools year over year, or mid-year. When that happens, access to prior treatments, methods, and a thorough understanding of the student’s present levels will allow therapy to remain consistent and protect against the risk of deterioration of functionality.

A central system that manages this Medicaid service data and provides instant access mitigates risks when therapists are no longer employed by the district, go on leave, or simply don’t have time to collect and send therapy summaries to the new therapist.

In the case of due process, documentation is paramount to preventing due process cases and reducing the timeline of proceedings. Findings by the Los Angeles Times report that school districts in California have seen an increase in due process cases from below 3,000 in the 2010-2011 school year to nearly 5,000 in the 17-18 school year.

Schools are commonly asked to pay not only for legal teams to protect themselves but are often obligated to pay the legal team hired by the parent. Due process legal fees were reported as $610,000 annually for the San Diego Unified Schools, and Poway Unified paid $489,000 in legal fees for the district, in addition to $487,000 for parent generated legal fees. Due process settlements cost Poway $1.1 million.[4]

School districts often settle ― even if they are in the right ― due to lengthy proceedings, but the best way to eliminate the cost of due process is to prevent the practices that lead to complaints in the first place. Documentation, not only of services provided but of services missed or cancelled, especially due to student absences, can build trust with parents through transparency.

“The best way to eliminate the cost of due process is to prevent practices that lead to complaints in the first place.”

How to start maintaining documentation standards

If your district doesn’t have best practices for documentation, collaboration with key stakeholders is the best way to begin the process. To start, include therapy leads in the conversation and get feedback on realistic timelines to implement new best practices.

Ensuring equitable treatment of providers is also important. Documentation should have a universal standard across all disciplines, so therapists feel they are being treated fairly in workload expectations. Education and incentivization are also excellent tools. A good first step in education is to review the documentation guidance issued by each therapy discipline.

Remember that stakeholders should be fluent in the various license and regulatory requirements that support universal service documentation. In addition, giving providers some transparency into your district’s due process budget and its impact on staffing levels, salaries and professional growth support can help therapists and other special education stakeholders understand why a best practice approach to documentation is vital to your district.

Finally, make sure you recognize individuals who exemplify your documentation standards. You can do this by using contests or opportunities for public recognition. These incentives will reward work well done and provide therapists with tangible examples that the documentation practices your district chooses are achievable.

Simplify the documentation, management and tracking of student services and strengthen compliance with Frontline’s Service Management and Medicaid Reimbursement software.

[1] The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.). Documentation in Schools. Retrieved from: https://www.asha.org/PRPSpecificTopic.aspx?folderid=8589942597&section=Key_Issues

[2]American Occupational Therapy Association. (2014). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process (3rd ed.). American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68, S1–S48. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2014.682006

[3] New Mexico Human Services Department Medical Assistance Division School Health Office. (2014). New Mexico Medicaid Guide for School Based Services. Retrieved from: https://www.hsd.state.nm.us/uploads/files/Looking%20For%20Information/Information%20for%20Recipients/Special%20Programs%20and%20Waivers/School-Based%20Health%20Overview/MSBS%20Guidebook%20Jan%202014%20Updates%20Final%20010914.pdf

[4] The Los Angeles Times. (2019). Families endure costly legal fights trying to get the right special education services. Retrieved from: www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-06/legal-fights-families-special-education-services

Infographic: How to Gauge the Impact of Your Professional Learning Program

Infographic

How to Gauge the Impact of Your Professional Development Program

Most schools dedicate a good deal of time and money to professional learning for teachers and staff. But not all schools can confidently say that all that time and money makes a difference where it counts: in the classroom. So, how do you gauge the impact of your program?

The answer: program evaluation.

Program Evaluation Can Help You:

  • Make data-informed decisions. Should your professional learning program be expanded, discontinued, or changed?
  • Keep all stakeholders in the know. How’s it going? Who is participating? Does it meet learners’ needs?
  • As an early warning system. What’s going well? What’s not? Will the program’s goals be reached?
  • Understand why the program is (or isn’t) successful. What factors influence the success of the program? What barriers might be getting in the way?
  • Show your success. Document your accomplishments and be able to justify the need for funding and resources.

The 5 Phases of Program Evaluation

1. Engagement & Understanding
Engagement & Understanding

Get all stakeholders on the same page: what are the stated outcomes of the program? What are participants expected to learn? What student outcomes are expected?

2. Evaluation Questions
Evaluation Questions

Come up with a few broad questions to investigate, such as “To what extent is the program changing teacher practice?” or “What evidence of student learning can be attributed to the program?”

3. Data Collection
Data Collection

There are many ways to collect data to answer your evaluation questions. A few examples:

  • Surveys & questionnaires
  • Interviews
  • Focus groups
  • Observations of the professional learning program
  • Classroom observations
  • Teachers journaling about their learning
  • Student data (achievement, attendance, discipline, work samples, etc.)
4. Data Analysis & Interpretation
Data Analysis & Interpretation

Don’t be intimidated by the idea of analyzing data! Most of the time, you just need to know how to calculate simple frequencies and averages, to answer questions like:

  • How satisfied were teachers with a professional learning activity?
  • What percentage of teachers intend to try a new instructional strategy as a result?
  • Did more novice teachers or veteran teachers participate in this activity?
  • How many teachers have used the new resources they were given? How often?
5. Reporting & Use
Reporting & Use

Once you’ve collected your data, it’s time to put it into the right hands. A comprehensive report might include:

  • A detailed description of the professional learning program, including goals and how it was expected to drive outcomes
  • Findings and conclusions
  • Recommendations for decision-makers to consider
  • The evaluation questions you explored
  • How you collected and analyzed the data

Be creative (and visual!) with your report — it can be helpful to think beyond written reports or presentations.

infographics
Infographics
infographics
Videos
infographics
Interactive Websites
infographics
Social Media Sharing

Program Evaluation is Critical to School Success

A rigorous program evaluation process will help you understand how professional learning programs are performing in your school environment, and is key to educator growth and continuous school improvement.

Learn More

Source: Robinson, S. B. (2019). Professional Development Program Evaluation for the Win: How to Sleep Well at Night Knowing Your Professional Learning is Effective. Retrieved from https://www.frontlineeducation.com/program-evaluation/

Want more?

Our eBook “Professional Development Program Evaluation for the Win: How to Sleep Well at Night Knowing Your Professional Learning is Effective” looks at each of the above steps in detail.

Read It Now

eBook Professional Development Program Evaluation

5 Ways Video Can Transform Classroom Instruction

 

Expand the classroom with video

Educators often look at a new technology and wonder how it will support ongoing improvement in teaching practice. Will it be cost effective and easy to use?

Early attempts to harness video weren’t always successful because, frankly, videos were hard to share in a useful context. But today, advanced video tools (such as, well, your phone) make it possible to use this medium to benefit classroom instruction in a meaningful way. Using video to support ongoing improvement for teachers is easier than it has ever been.

There are several creative ways to do this. Here are just a few:

1. Self-reflection and self-evaluation

New teachers often have trouble keeping up with everything going on in a dynamic classroom. Guided self-reflection with video helps a teacher see what students and observers see, creating a dramatic leap forward in teaching practice. Videos can be stored in easily accessible libraries to record progress over time.

But what about those who are uncomfortable filming themselves teaching and then replaying the footage? That’s not at all unusual, but there are specific things you can do to make it easier.

2. Coaching

Coaching is kept on target as video guides a continuous improvement process. After coaches review the recording, the feedback is integrated by teachers in the classroom and then reviewed again — creating a continuous cycle of improvement until goals are met. A huge advantage of video is that constraints of time and travel are eliminated.

Listen to our interview with Dr. Jim Knight about using video as a professional development tool for teachers. (28 minutes)

3. Video libraries

Ever been inspired by a great teacher? Watching experienced teachers in the classroom can lead to growth when coupled with interactive exercises and commentary. Plus, sharing a library of videos that teachers can access for just-in-time support provides the kind of classroom-focused, job-embedded learning opportunities that have meaningful impact.

4. Learning Communities

Best practices can easily be defined in videos of familiar teachers and students. These videos can then be shared with student teachers and other peers. Using video for peer mentoring and collaboration within a district or educational community is a powerful way to increase knowledge and share best practices.

Additionally, video allows teachers to share examples of practice with colleagues who may work in other buildings or districts, even other states.

See how Frontline’s Learning & Collaboration Resources makes it easy to provide targeted professional learning opportunities through videos, courses, collaborative groups, and micro-credentials.

5. Observation

Use video to create an authentic window into the classroom. Video observation allows teachers to be reviewed more accurately and efficiently. Video can also be used remotely, allowing for classroom observation without an observer having to be physically present.

Whether by supporting evaluations or equipping teachers and coaches with useful tools for reflection, increasingly video is helping educators improve their practice.

Working with Parents in Special Education

“I think I treated parents like an obstacle without realizing it.”

Working in special education can be very rewarding. It can also be extremely challenging. One of the many reasons it can be challenging is working with parents.

Parents want the best for their kids – which is how it should be. Sometimes they have specific ideas about how that should look in a school setting. And sometimes those ideas turn into requests, or even demands, and conflict with what educators believe is appropriate for student support.

So, what happens then? Stressful calls. Tense IEP meetings. Strongly worded emails. Litigation.

In a recent podcast episode, three current and former administrators — two of them, parents of a student with special needs — share what they’ve learned from years of working with parents throughout the special education process.

 

Help parents understand the “lingo”

“Often times I’ve realized that the lingo that we use as educators, as administrators, is not something that people understand. We’re using all these big words about what’s wrong with their child, but not actually telling them in plain, simple English what the problem is.” – Sashi Gundala, Vice Principal

Don’t sacrifice clarity for positivity in your communication

“You say, ‘Well, this is where we are in September. Let’s continue to hold hands with the family, not just the child, and really help them to understand that the child’s struggles are not a source of shame or embarrassment. The child will make some progress, just maybe not at the rate and speed that the family had hoped, and that’s okay.’ I would say that that’s one of the most important things educators can do to work with families is to have some patience and understanding that this process is going to take a very, very long time, depending on the stage that you’re able to work with the family and intervene with the family.” – Dr. Christine Capaci, Director of Data Assessment and Accountability

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Admit when you don’t know the answer

“To say ‘I don’t know’ as a professional feels unprofessional. It feels like I should know everything, or I’m too new, but it’s an expression of vulnerability to get up in front of people with parents who you know might take what you say to a support group or the public, or might circle back and get to your boss. To say ‘I don’t know’ is an expression of vulnerability. And everybody has been there. So it’s a place for connection to say, ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry I don’t know. Let me get back to you.’” – Sam Hendrickson, former K-12 HR director

[ctt template=”9″ link=”b6di0″ via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]To say “I don’t know” is an expression of vulnerability. And everybody has been there. Everybody has not known something. #specialeducation [/ctt]

Keep lines of communication open

“[Consider] offering workshops and meeting places for parents. Just invite them, have your CST team talk to these parents and educate them, and tell them about the process and what is going on, and even what their rights are, what they can get from the state, how the school is helping.” – Sashi Gundala

“Honestly speaking, schools do a lot … it’s just that sometimes it doesn’t reach the parents in the right manner … They don’t see everything else that is being done [for their child].”

Address fear instead of anger

“[Special education] is a difficult emotional journey for the parents. And from the point of diagnosis until the time that the appropriate program that’s making differences is in place, there’s a lot of time that goes by.”

“Parents would come and say things like, ‘I would like my child to have an augmentative device. I want my child to have a [one-on-one] aide. I want my child to have speech therapy by themselves and not in a group. I know you do it with other kids. I want it for my child, too.’ … And what was happening, I believe, was that [the parents were] coming in angry. Underneath all of that is fear.” – Sam Hendrickson

Want more stories for education leaders? Subscribe to the Field Trip podcast.

Project Management Should Be Part of Your ERP Selection Choice

When searching for new ERP software, there are many factors to consider, like company experience, customer recommendations, desired features, and product infrastructure. One of the factors that may get overlooked but is essential to a smooth transition is project management. We all know that implementations are complex. There are so many moving parts, it can be challenging to ensure that there is consensus among the team and all tasks are completed on time.

In the Challenges and Best Practices of Managing Government Projects and Programs study of public projects and programs from diverse sectors, two of the six key recommendations were using mandated project management processes and engaging stakeholders. The research found that the application of project management practices positively affects the outcome of government projects.

You need to reduce resistance to change

People at all levels of the school district – from budget managers and warehouse supervisors to payroll technicians and school principals – need to feel like they are part of the process. The best way to keep people engaged is through purposeful communication. By communicating all aspects of the coming implementation, school business employees have the opportunity to become champions and stakeholders.

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During the initiating stage of a project, the most important task is for everyone to understand and agree upon the project. Standard project management practices ensure that communication is clear and accountable. Two common project management deliverables are the Project Charter and the Communications Plan.

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Using a Project Charter – which outlines the scope of the project – stakeholders can see the entire plan in a single document, detailing the project goals, scope, assumptions, and constraints. A companion of the Project Charter is the Communications Plan – which defines how communication in the project will be handled, including regularly scheduled meetings and milestone reviews. During the planning stage, the Communications Plan provides a stable set of expectations, resulting in a smoother transition and more cooperation from all of the players in a school district.

If people don’t know what changes are coming, they may resist. Clear communication is an agent for encouraging acceptance and cooperation.

[ctt template=”9″ link=”Jy2LU” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]If people don’t know what changes are coming, they may resist. Clear communication is an agent for encouraging acceptance and cooperation.[/ctt]

You need to keep everyone on track

Now that you have the buy-in, you need to execute and control the implementation process. Of course, you haven’t stopped communicating. At the beginning of the project, industry-standard project management protocols call for a Kick-off Meeting where an overview of the project is presented to all stakeholders. The Kick-off Meeting and the presentation of the project plan gives everyone the opportunity to ask questions about the project, anticipate how it will affect them, and understand how the project will be managed.

At the meeting, the Project Management team, which has representatives from the software vendor and the school district, can present the timeline and incremental milestones to the entire district. Gantt charts are a common project management tool for managing the timeline. Yes, they can be intimidating, but they are a great visual tool to ensure that overlapping priorities can be achieved in a timely manner. Using Gantt charts (or any other illustrative project scheduling tool) and project plans, everyone can visualize the tasks and dependencies required to achieve the goal of the project.

When people have assigned tasks with reasonable deadlines and accountability, they are more likely to meet the challenges of the project with a positive and productive attitude.

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You need a company that has a proven record

The beauty of project management is that it is repeatable and effective. Research shows that it works. Companies that use industry-standard project management practices are going to have the processes in place that are more likely to result in an implementation that is on schedule and positively received. When looking for new software, especially for projects as large as ERP replacement, confirming that project management is in place – with all six stages: Project Launch, Requirements & Data Gathering, Configuration, Rollout, Go Live and Project Close Out – safeguards your project timelines and increases the likelihood of smooth transition.

Young Hoon Kwak, P. M. L. (2014). Challenges and Best Practices of Managing Government Projects and Programs to the Theory and Practices. https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/research/research-summaries/kwak_challenges-and-best-practices-of-govt-projects.pdf

Teacher Recruitment Strategies: Tried-and-True Ways to Build Your Applicant Pool

 

 
The next generation of teachers will be entering the teaching workforce before we know it. For those with a classroom waiting for them after graduation, the fun is only just beginning. Others might be spending an entire summer still searching for job postings — are they finding yours?

Read on to see if your teacher recruiting strategies make your postings visible to job-seekers in the right places.

Table of Contents

Recruit Where the Candidates Are

Teachers look for jobs on the internet first.

One thing is for sure: job-seekers are turning to the internet first. Teachers report checking job boards daily for new postings and combing through district websites to find openings.

What teachers say:

  • “To find openings, I checked my state’s job service website multiple times a week (every 1-2 days!).”
  • “K12JobSpot is a site I visit daily. I also made a spreadsheet with all the districts I’m willing to drive out to, and found direct links to their employment page. I check those every day and apply if anything is up!”
  • Of course, teachers have to find your school district before they can look through your employment pages. One teacher wrote, “I live in a somewhat rural area and have done teacher recruitment days, as well as an ole’ fashioned google search of ‘schools in my county, my state.’”

What this means for you:

  • It’s more important than ever that your district can easily be found online, so invest in developing your district’s brand as an employer.

Teacher job fairs are still a good bet.

The Internet might be beloved by job-seekers for sheer convenience and accessibility, but that doesn’t mean that job hunting has gone exclusively digital. In-person job fairs are still popular with new and veteran teachers alike.

What teachers say:

  • “I applied in probably 10-15 districts and went to 2 different job fairs.”
  • “Your best bet is to look at job fairs. Districts will go to them out of state if they need to fill lots of spots.”

What this means for you:

  • Recruiting teachers at career fairs is still a viable way to find candidates. You’re able to market your district exactly the way you want to a wide pool of motivated job-seekers, show off why your district is a fantastic place to work and meet with interested candidates face-to-face.

Networking is still a reliable teacher recruitment technique.

Any post about where educators find their first teaching job would be incomplete without the time-honored tradition of finding careers through student or substitute teaching. It’s a good way for new teachers to get their foot in the door through networking, while gaining valuable experience in the classroom.

What teachers say:

  • “Your best bet is to substitute if you haven’t already been. That’s how quite a few people I know got jobs in areas without large demand.”
  • “Even if you don’t get hired right away, subbing gives you a lot of good experience as a teacher, especially if you place effort to actually teach the kids instead of sitting back and watching them chat. You’ll not only network but you’ll get experience in the actual classroom, which will make it less daunting for your first year teaching.”

What this means for you:

  • Keep building those existing relationships with your student teachers and substitutes — they could be wonderful full-time teachers in the future. When it comes to your substitute pool in particular, you can help grow their classroom skills with professional development opportunities and encourage full-time teachers to leave substitutes constructive feedback after an absence. Not only does this help them become better educators, but shows that your district invests in its people and their growth.

Make sure to remove obstacles in the application process.

No matter how an applicant finds your district, you can be sure that you’re not the only one receiving their resume. Many teachers said they sent out resumes and applications to dozens of districts (or more), as if they were taking a page out of Oprah’s playbook — “You get an application, and you get an application, everyone gets an application!”

What teachers say:

  • “I sent out to over 100 districts.”
  • “I sent a cover letter and resume to every one of the 125 school districts on Long Island. Then I sent one to the Archdiocese of NYC and to every Catholic high school on Long Island.”
  • “I sent out about 40 resumes (and this is for music = not many jobs)”
  • “My suggestion is to apply to anything and everything. You don’t have the room to be picky. I did that, and am sure I applied to 60+ jobs.”
  • “Here’s my advice. Apply everywhere.”

What this means for you:

  • When job applications are pouring in, make sure you have a system to help you stay afloat. You need to be able to easily collect and store the resumes coming in (without them cluttering up your desk), sort through them, painlessly find candidates with the most potential and keep all of their materials together. Find a way to make the entire process work for you with online applicant tracking software — otherwise, hiring is going to take over your every waking moment.

 

Innovative Teacher Recruitment Strategies Every School Can Use

The news is full of districts coming up with innovative ways to attract new educators. Some build housing, offer sizeable signing bonuses or help new teachers pay off student loans.

Some of these strategies take a while to take full effect — like “Grow Your Own” programs, which focus on supporting current non-teaching staff in a journey to becoming credentialed teachers. Other districts focus on co-curricular career pathways (like Educators Rising) to help secondary school students prepare for a future in teaching. This goes beyond teacher recruiting — districts will need to also take a more holistic approach to developing and retaining their current employees to keep the best teachers in their classrooms.

But not every district has the resources for those kinds of incentives. Luckily, there are ways to ensure deeper applicant pools for every position.

Start recruiting and hiring teachers early.

When is the best time to start recruiting teachers?

Trick question — it’s always a good time to build your applicant pool.

Instead of waiting for candidates to come to you, consider proactively recruiting applicants. Keep in mind that the best teachers do tend to be hired early in the spring, so it’s a good idea to move your hiring timeline up as much as possible. You’ll be the early bird who gets the worm, plus you’ll have less end-of-summer stress caused by unfilled positions as the school year approaches.

Create compelling recruitment materials.

What makes great teachers want to work in your school? Invest in a well-designed district website to attract new applicants and show off the many reasons why teachers should want to work with you. Recruitment is all about marketing your district, so make sure you have a compelling message to reach potential candidates.

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Modernize (and customize) your teacher recruiting practices.

Still using newspaper classifieds? Today’s job-seekers look for positions online, so consider advertising jobs on high-volume websites like K12Jobspot.

Recruiting online lets you reach more teachers, even those out of state. And although it’s often said that about 60 percent of teachers work within 20 miles of where they went to high school, this may be changing. Millennials — the youngest generation of teachers —are far more likely to relocate for a job, with 85 percent saying they are willing to move to a new city for work.

They’re also the most likely to seek out new jobs online, making online teacher recruiting a sound strategy for any district. So, focus your recruitment efforts online, and make an effort to proactively reach out to the most qualified educators. Having the right tools can save you time by automating recruitment campaigns — there’s no need to spend hours individually writing and sending messages to each potential candidate.

Building a strong applicant pool is like making a masterpiece out of LEGO: it will take some creativity and time, and you need to make sure you have all the right pieces. But it’s all worth it when you find the right teachers who, like LEGO, will “inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.”

Use Data to Set & Reach Your Teacher Hiring Goals

Across your district, teachers and principals are using data to set goals and evaluate their performance, so finding the best and brightest teachers for your district should be no different.

But by setting aside time to establish goals, you’ll have the structure you need to develop an effective strategy for continual improvement.

So, what goals should you set to complete the recruiting and hiring process?

Step 1: Gather hiring data

The most actionable goals are based on a thorough review of your district’s data. So, you will need to pull together your recruiting and hiring data. If you have the right software, this is a breeze.

But if not, this could be the hardest part of goal-setting — if your hiring process is based on paper, you will have some difficulty getting the full picture of your district’s trends. Or, if you manage your hiring through an inefficient HRIS system, you may need to get in touch with your IT department to export the data.

In any case, gather as much recruiting and hiring data as possible. Without this step, you might be able to come up with objectives, but you’ll be ill-equipped to track your progress toward them.

You may want to take a few minutes to reflect on this data-gathering process. If you had any difficulty accessing the data you need, or find any inaccuracies or gaps, consider setting a goal to make your data more visible and easier to use.

Step 2: Ask the right questions

Look closely at your district’s data and look for patterns. It may be most helpful to look for changes over the past several years and year-over-year trends, if the data is available. If not, it’s perfectly fine to start with the past year.

Ask yourself:

  • Which data points are surprising to you?
  • Why do you think the data shows one trend or another?
  • What improvements would you like to see?

Don’t forget to recognize and celebrate where you are doing well already.

A few specific areas to consider, and questions to ask:

New hires & applicant pools

Look closely at who your district has hired. What do you notice about the population of new teachers? Is this what you would expect to see? Were you able to fill all of your open positions, or are still some waiting for the right candidate to come along?

Next, compare your new hire data to your applicant pool and note any differences you see. You may want to examine whether new hires disproportionately come from any particular recruitment channel, or if they tend to have a certain experience in common. For example, do word-of-mouth referrals represent a disproportionately large percentage of new hires? Or do you tend to hire heavily from your substitute teacher pool, or educators who started out as student teachers in your district?

You may also want to look at the volume of high-quality candidates, particularly by subject areas.

  • Did you have enough high-quality applicants to select from overall?
  • What about for shortage-prone positions like Special Education, STEM or speech pathology?
  • And are you confident that the best candidates were hired, or is it possible that some may have slipped through the cracks?

For even better insight, take a look at retention rates for last year’s new hires, benchmarked against your overall retention rate. This will give you a better idea of how well your hiring process selects candidates who fit into the school culture.

The hiring timeline

The next step is exploring metrics like time-to-hire, and when most candidates were hired. By looking at how long it takes to fill most vacancies, you may be able to identify inefficient processes that hold up the hiring process. And by identifying which positions take the longest to fill, you’ll know where to put more of your teacher recruitment resources.

Plus, you’ll be able to determine how early in the year you should start hiring to have positions filled. Remember that hiring late in the year means less-qualified applicant pools, so if most of your jobs are filled in late July and August, you could be missing out on the most talented candidates.

Dig into what could be causing jobs to not be posted until late summer. How can you predict staffing needs more accurately?

The applicant experience

Finally, you may want to gather input from individuals involved in hiring, from your new hires to principals. Consider sending out a survey asking new hires for feedback on the application and hiring process. For principals, consider sending a survey asking for their opinion on the quality of the applicant pool and the hiring process itself — were they satisfied with the level of support they received from Human Resources? Did they notice any inefficiencies that could be addressed?

Gathering feedback from those involved in hiring across the district allows you to go beyond hiring data alone and understand how others perceive the process. Plus, it fosters collaboration and engagement by showing that you care about their experience. And in the end, it will help you provide a more positive experience for applicants and administrators alike.

Step 3: Set preliminary goals and actions

After working your way through the data, determine what your district needs to focus on for the upcoming year and set objective, clearly-defined goals that are aligned to those areas of improvement. These should be realistic — it’s good to have a few “stretch” goals, but ultimately, all of your objectives should be achievable. If you currently receive 40 applications a year for hard-to-staff positions across the district, don’t set a goal of having 250 next year.

A reasonable number of feasible goals will give you the structure you need to develop effective, targeted strategies, without overwhelming yourself or your colleagues.

Lay out your recruiting and hiring goals for the coming year and build a framework for a strategy to help you improve on those metrics and meet your goals. The more integrated that strategy is, the more effectively you’ll be able to improve your hiring across the board with less effort. But don’t stop there — to really ensure success, think about your goals forward and backward.

Thinking forward comes naturally: I want X, so I will implement Y strategy to get there. Thinking backwards — or inverting the problem — means asking yourself, What would prevent me from reaching my goal? What should I do to make sure those things don’t happen? You might realize that your district is inadvertently doing something that holds your recruitment and hiring processes back. Then, you can make a change and ensure that nothing stands between you and your goals.

For example, if your goal is to find more applicants, you could “think forward” by allocating more time and money to attending more job fairs, both locally and out-of-state. But by “thinking backward” you might realize that plenty more job-seekers might apply to your district, if only your application process were more applicant-friendly. By no longer requiring job-seekers to apply in-person or send a thick packet through snail mail, you may find that more qualified educators apply to work in the district.

Step 4: Track your progress

After implementing any changes to your hiring process or strategy, the next step is to continually monitor your data. Don’t let yourself be surprised at the end of the year — you’re more likely to meet your goals when you can track your progress toward them and adjust course as needed.

This step shouldn’t be a burden, either. Just like you expect educators to embed data into their daily work, set aside 5-10 minutes once a week to check in on your progress. Even if the rest of your day is consumed by putting out fires and you don’t have time to immediately act on the data, you’ll be in a better position to stay on top of what’s happening in the district.

By setting goals based on your district’s hiring trends and tracking your progress against them, you’ll be able to strategically improve your teacher recruiting and hiring strategies.

Top 5 FERPA & HIPAA Misconceptions for Schools

We live in an age filled with threats to student privacy. As an important member of your school community, you’re a defender of that privacy. And that role comes with a great deal of responsibility. Part of your responsibility is understanding two primary laws that protect against the unlawful disclosure of personal and health information: the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule.

These laws are complex and often misunderstood – which can lead to stress in school employees and can put your students and district at risk.

As an education law attorney representing schools, I help clarify many FERPA and HIPAA misconceptions that keep school personnel up at night.

Here are the top five misconceptions about FERPA and HIPAA that I regularly address in my work with schools.

1. “HIPAA applies to schools.”

Nope. 

Educators worry about the confidentiality of all student information, particularly the data relied upon in developing and implementing IEPs and Section 504 plans, often on account of “HIPAA” protection concerning diagnostic and medical records. Such concern is helpful and motivating, because virtually all information regarding students – certainly doctor notes and evaluations – are protected from disclosure and review by anyone without “legitimate educational interests.”

But those protections are not because of HIPAA.

HIPAA, the “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996,” restricts the access, use and disclosure of “protected health information” maintained by “covered entities.” These entities are typically health plans, health-care clearinghouses, and health-care providers. That means that your school is not a covered entity, unless you’re providing “health care,” like through a free clinic or other service beyond a day-to-day school nurse.

So, stop worrying about HIPAA. But pay attention to FERPA and your state’s student record laws and regulations.

 

 

2. “We can’t call the doctor who wrote the student note without a signed release.”

That depends on who’s talking and what they’re sharing.

FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (also known as the “Buckley Amendment”), ensures access by parents and students and protects against the non-approved disclosure of “personally identifiable information” about students. That information includes virtually all information you collect and maintain on an enrolled student, certainly including the contents of the special education and Section 504 files.

But when you call a doctor to confirm that she authored a note that your Section 504 committee is considering, or to ask a question about a diagnosis for purposes of IEP drafting, or to confirm a medically excused absence, usually you’re not sharing information about the student. You are not disclosing “personally identifiable information” protected by FERPA. Rather, you’re asking for information from the doctor or the doctor’s office. A parent, guardian, or adult student need not permit you to call the doctor. You have that right.

A release needed here, if any, is to be secured by the doctor from the parents/guardians, since any information shared is likely “health information” shared from the health provider to the school ― the school isn’t sharing information about the student.

Any release needed is up to the doctor to determine. You can make your call, and ask relevant questions, so long as that conversation is a one-way street.

 

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3. “Parents have access to all documents that mention their student.”

Well, most documents, but actually ― not all.

Records that are kept in the “sole possession” of the maker, and not shared with any other person, are not considered “education records” under FERPA, regardless of the nature of the information they contain. This means that notes kept by a teacher, or a related service provider, regarding the implementation of modifications and/or accommodations, or notes kept by persons attending IEP team or Section 504 meetings, so long as not shared with or accessible by others, are not covered by FERPA.

Since this information is not considered to be FERPA-protected “education records,” it is not automatically accessible by parents.

Keep in mind though, those documents likely become education records if shared with colleagues or kept in a folder or file that is accessible by others. The information must be kept in the “sole possession” of the maker and maintained as confidential and not shared with others in order to remain outside of FERPA’s mandates.

 

4. “FERPA prohibits paraprofessionals/teacher aides from seeing IEPs and Section 504 plans.”

That’s probably not right.

FERPA prohibits the disclosure of personally identifiable information regarding students contained in education records by schools to third-parties without written consent (typically provided by parent or guardian).

But FERPA does not require written consent when “school officials” with “legitimate educational interest” review student records. Such access does not require prior notice to parents or guardians, other than the usual, annual FERPA notice provided by schools.

So, who are “school officials” with authority to review this information? And what is a “legitimate educational interest?” These terms are not defined by the law. Schools are required to define them in policy or regulation, and that information needs to be noted in the annual notice.

Typically, these terms may be defined by asking the question, “What’s the need to know?” or “What’s the job duty?” that requires access to the information?

If the answer involves the delivery of instruction, or the implementation of modifications or accommodations or related service provided in an IEP or Section 504 plan, then access to the record is likely permissible.

However, if the answer is curiosity, or some purpose unrelated to education, access is prohibited.

Which brings us to the paraprofessional or aide. Does that individual need to review an IEP or Section 504 plan to implement his or her responsibilities under that document? May the para be trained in some other way? May you simply provide a list of responsibilities? What’s best practice? What’s the consistent practice of the school?

The point is ― there is no blanket rule under FERPA (or otherwise) that “non-certificated” personnel have less authority to access student records. And that’s a good thing, because paras have similar ownership of IEP and Section 504 plans. They are valued members of our teams and should be treated as such.

 

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5. “Students can’t see other students’ grades under FERPA.”

That depends on who’s grading.

Typically, grades are “personally identifiable information” set forth in education records which are protected from unauthorized disclosure under FERPA. But in the seminal case of Owasso Independent School District v. Falvo, 534 U.S. 426 (2002), the United States Supreme Court held (in favor of a school district) that students scoring each other’s tests and calling out the grades does not violate FERPA. The Court found that those grades were “pre” grade book and not yet within education records, thus not protected. (To the relief of elementary teachers nation-wide.)

So, the practice of “peer grading” is acceptable. But don’t interpret that to mean that teachers may disclose student grades without consent. Because they cannot. Once a teacher is in possession of a grade, it becomes a protected education record. That information may be shared with parental consent, like through the publication of an honor roll, or sharing records with another school — and as discussed above, those with “legitimate” purpose internally may review the grades. But absent those circumstances, the information is protected.

 

In Summary

Remember to reflect on “Why?” and “Who?” and “What?” regarding student information. And remember to consider the purpose of external communications. FERPA and HIPAA exist primarily to ensure access to information and to protect against the disclosure of that information to persons without the need to know. Be careful out there.