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RTI/MTSS & COVID-19: 3 Steps to Regain Control

This post is for you if you have wondered:
  • How can we tell which learners are most affected academically by the school shutdowns?
  • What will the academic impact be? How can we even start to measure it?
  • Can we still successfully implement RTI/MTSS programs during distance learning? How?
  • What can we do NOW to lay the groundwork for RTI/MTSS needs when school reconvenes?
  • How can we triage RTI/MTSS services fairly and equitably when buildings reopen?

In mid-March 2020, schools across the nation closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This sudden and massive interruption of instruction is unprecedented and represents a cataclysm with no playbook on how schools should respond. And there is the further possibility that — even after schools reconvene — future instructional lockdowns may be ordered due to flareups of the virus.

Most schools are regularly delivering some form of online instruction during the current COVID-19 lockdown. However, schools are reporting that numerous students — perhaps as many as half in some low-income school districts — are not participating in online learning1. The medium- and long-term consequences are likely to be dire for this large group of “digitally absent” students. Not only are they failing to receive new instruction, but they are also missing opportunities to review and reinforce previously taught skills and academic content. As a result, when schools return to session, this substantial group of students is predicted to have large learning gaps that must be identified and remediated.

Students who received RTI/MTSS academic support prior to school closure are at even greater risk for academic regression. These learners typically show deficits in such basic academic skills as math-fact fluency or reading comprehension, reducing their ability to work independently. To compound the problem, these RTI/MTSS students also often lack strong self-management skills — such as the ability to schedule their time, organize their workspace, study — that are necessary components of home instruction. RTI/MTSS students may also face additional risk factors, such as parents who struggle to adequately supervise and coach their learning or having little or no access to home Internet service.

It is understandable that RTI/MTSS Teams might feel helpless when faced with the colossal impact of the COVID-19 interruption to schooling and uncertainty about its duration. In fact, however, there are three important tasks that your RTI/MTSS Team can take on immediately to assert control even as this crisis continues to unfold: The Team can:

  • While schools are closed, coordinate problem-solving conversations with parents of at-risk home-bound students
  • When schools reopen, lay plans to rapidly screen students for academic risk
  • When schools reconvene, triage future intervention services to ensure that the widest range of eligible students are matched to RTI/MTSS academic support

Taking these three steps can help you minimize disruption for your students and regain control of your RTI/MTSS efforts. Keep reading for an outline and examples of each step.

1. Schools Closed: Create RTI/MTSS Home-Based Intervention Plans

The current education lockdown can seem bewildering to school staff because the learning environment has been relocated to the home — and therefore lies outside of teachers’ direct control. One complication is that the parent(s) or guardians may need direction and guidance to take on an unfamiliar educational role as onsite supervisor of their child’s learning. Another is that the home setting offers many distractions that can interfere with learning.

Despite such hurdles, RTI/MTSS Teams should remember that the essential elements of instruction are still in place in home-based distance learning: teachers deliver instruction, assign academic work, and provide performance feedback/grades to evaluate student work. It follows that, even via online instruction, teachers should be able to identify which of their students fail to engage in, or are doing poorly in, schoolwork and would benefit from an RTI/MTSS intervention. With only minor modifications, then, the RTI/MTSS Team should be able to adapt its familiar school-based process of teacher referral and intervention planning to home-based instruction.

It should be acknowledged, though, that most schools cannot offer intensive-intervention services such as Tier 2 reading groups during the lockdown period. Instead, intervention attempts centering on home learning will be modest in scope — equivalent to Tier 1/classroom support. Still, such interventions are worth attempting and documenting as they may help to salvage at least some learning for the student. The steps below sketch out a general process that the RTI/MTSS team can follow to find learners struggling with home-centered instruction and provide and document RTI/MTSS support plans.

  • Survey teachers. The RTI/MTSS Team contacts all teachers and requests that instructors send them names of any students who are substantially underperforming or failing to participate in online instruction.
  • Schedule parent problem-solving conferences. The classroom teacher or other school representative (e.g., school counselor, school psychologist, reading or math interventionist) schedules a phone call or video conference with parent(s) of at-risk students. During this call, parent(s) and school personnel identify what blocker(s) appear to prevent student success and develop a brief written intervention plan to address these blockers. (For a teacher protocol with guidelines for conducting a parent conference by phone, access the handout RTI/MTSS in the time of COVID-19: Writing a Home-Based Academic Support Plan.)
  • Archive RTI/MTSS plans. The school saves and archives these home-based RTI/MTSS plans as part of the overall intervention record of at-risk students.

[ctt template=”9″ link=”kEcH4″ via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]When students return to school, the race will be on to speedily match those requiring RTI/MTSS support to the appropriate level of intervention services.[/ctt]

2. Schools Reopen: Strengthen Academic Screening and Diagnostic Capacity

The reality haunting district and school leaders and their teams during the closure period is that instruction has been interrupted for months for an unknown but potentially large number of students. While there is no recent parallel in America for the current pandemic lockdown, one way that you and your teams can better understand its likely academic impact is by looking at the pattern and magnitude of “typical” student academic regression during summer recess (the so-called summer slide).

Research indicates that when schooling is interrupted for summer vacation, the majority of students exhibit at least some academic loss, math shows a greater decline than reading, and there is a greater proportional impact on learning in the upper grades2. So, the probability is high that the COVID-19 “school closure slide” will result in a similar pattern across students but with greater losses in learning corresponding to the longer period of school interruption.

When schools reconvene, this group of delayed learners will need timely remediation to “catch up” on missed instruction. The question of exactly how schools will provide such large-scale remediation lies beyond the scope of the RTI/MTSS Team, as this decision is complex and will require input from important stakeholding groups such as school boards, teachers’ unions, and state education departments.

However, when schools are back in session, the RTI/MTSS Team can play a vital role in measuring the scope and magnitude of academic delays in the student population. Applying its existing skills in school-wide screening, the team has the tools to rapidly tabulate the number of learners at each grade level with substantial instructional gaps and highlight the specific “lost” curriculum content from the closure period that teachers will need to reteach to the entire class or grade.

While school-wide academic screeners can give general information about student skill gaps, instructors may wish to supplement screeners with their own teacher-made assessments that evaluate targeted skills and content originally taught during the lockdown period.

Example:

If schools reopen in the fall of 2020, a 4th-grade math teacher may administer a test within the first week to survey students’ mastery of important grade 3 math skills and concepts first covered during the spring school closure.

The combination of RTI/MTSS screening data and teachers’ supplemental assessments should supply sufficient information to reveal how much time instructors will need to set aside to review past learning and the specific curriculum content to revisit.

There will be considerable pressure to conduct these assessments as quickly as possible when schools reconvene, to make up for lost instructional time. For this reason, schools should lay the groundwork for these screenings now, during the closure period.

Example:

The RTI/MTSS Team should consider reviewing its schoolwide academic screener(s) (e.g., Measures of Academic Progress/NWEA; STAR Reading or Math, etc.) and familiarize itself with any reports generated by the screener(s) that summarize group academic performance. These group reports analyzing shared skill deficits will be extremely helpful in gauging the pattern of “school closure slide” experienced by each grade level.

Similarly, teachers can use the lockdown period to review the academic curriculum currently being as delivered in home instruction and develop classroom assessments that will allow them to rapidly assess degree of student mastery as soon as classes reconvene.

3. Schools Reopen: Create a Plan to Triage RTI/MTSS Services

When students return to school, the race will be on to speedily match those requiring RTI/MTSS academic support to the appropriate level of intervention services. In an average school, about 10 to 15 percent of students may typically qualify for Tier 2/3 services at any one time3. However, if substantial numbers of learners have regressed in academic skills because of their “digital absence” during the closure period, you may find that the pool of eligible RTI/MTSS students has swelled to a level that potentially could overwhelm that building’s capacity to provide those services.

While the lockdown phase continues, the RTI/MTSS Team will probably find it impossible to estimate with any accuracy how many students might qualify for RTI/MTSS Tier 2/3 support when schools eventually reopen. Still, schools recording high numbers of non-participating learners during closure are likely to experience a spike in Tier 2/3-eligible students down the road. But even without clear projections of at-risk students, the RTI/MTSS Team should develop contingency plans in case they encounter an unexpected demand on intensive-intervention services in the near future.

One idea for schools overwhelmed with potential Tier 2/3 referrals might be to place on a “Tier 1 watchlist” those students falling in the mild to moderate risk level (e.g., 15-25th percentile) on a building-wide RTI/MTSS screener. As an RTI/MTSS service, these students would receive Tier 1/classroom instructional review of curriculum originally covered during the closure period. Those watchlist students flagged again with mild to moderate risk on the next school-wide academic screening would then be placed in Tier 2/3 services.

Another expedient to manage a possible surge of Tier 2/3 students may be to identify a cadre of non-instructional personnel within the school community (e.g., paraprofessionals; adult/parent volunteers; cross-age peer tutors; etc.). These personnel could be supervised by intervention teachers and would assist in delivering intervention instruction4.

Example:

In one urban elementary school, 5th-grade students trained and overseen by adults successfully provided intervention support to 2nd-grade children to promote reading fluency.5

Key Takeaway: The RTI/MTSS Team Replaces “Chaos with Order”

During the current COVID-19 educational closure, schools might feel that they are in free-fall with little sense of how to reconnect with disengaged home-bound students, assess the magnitude of lost instruction across the school, or triage RTI/MTSS services fairly and equitably when buildings reopen. And we should be under no illusions: the negative effects of the pandemic will probably reverberate through our school systems for years to come.

During this difficult time, however, the RTI/MTSS Team can follow the recommendations shared here to replace COVID-19 chaos with order, assisting their schools with the continuing mission to deliver timely academic support to their most vulnerable learners.

Whether remote or in-district, collecting high-quality, actionable RTI/MTSS data is critical for assisting struggling learners. Frontline can make RTI/MTSS data collection easier for you and your team. Learn how

1 Goldstein, D., Popescu, A., and Hannah-Jones, N. (2020, April 6). As school moves online, many students stay logged out. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com

2 Kuhfeld, M., & Tarasawa, B. (2020). The COVID-19 slide: What summer learning loss can tell us about the potential impact of school closures on student academic achievement. NWEA. Retrieved from https://www.nwea.org/

3 Wright, J. (2007). The RTI toolkit: A practical guide for schools. Port Chester, NY: National Professional Resources, Inc.

4 Burns, M. K., & Gibbons, K. A. (2008). Implementing response-to-intervention in elementary and secondary schools. New York: Routledge.

5 Wright, J., & Cleary, K. S. (2006). Kids in the tutor seat: Building schools’ capacity to help struggling readers through a cross-age peer-tutoring program. Psychology in the Schools, 43(1), 99-107.

What the Data Says: K-12 Hiring During COVID-19

Eight weeks. That’s how long it’s been since the President declared a National Emergency on March 13, calling for measures to fight COVID-19. The following days brought restrictions and stay-at-home orders in nearly every state.

You’ve seen the bad (overwhelmed ERs, stratospheric unemployment) and the good (schools providing lunches, cheers for medical workers). You’ve probably become accustomed to wearing a mask. You’ve made tough decisions about schooling — and more tough decisions lie ahead. At a time when the teacher shortage already makes it difficult for many districts to fill open positions, some fear that this year could be even worse if large numbers of experienced teachers decide to exit the field once schools reopen in the fall.

The stakes are high, and it’s never been more important to make data-driven decisions about hiring for your schools. So today, we’re looking at data from the Frontline Research & Learning Institute to see what can be learned about how this crisis is impacting districts and job-seekers in K-12.

In the charts below, “Week 11” refers to the 11th week of 2020: Sunday, March 8 through Saturday, March 14. This appears to be the last week of relatively normal applicant data — not surprising, as it corresponds with the Declaration of National Emergency. Depending on where you live, schools and businesses also began sending people home around this time.

Above, we can see that up through Week 11, the number of 2020 job applicants in Frontline Recruiting & Hiring and K12JobSpot tracks closely with prior years. Beginning in Week 12, the number drops noticeably. Did job seekers simply stop applying for jobs at that time?

Looking at the average number of applicants per district, the same trends appear: job seekers applied in similar numbers to 2018 and 2019 through Week 11, and there is a sharp dip in Week 12 — the very week that in prior years saw a notable increase.

Again, this was around the time schools and businesses closed and states began issuing stay-at-home orders. Were applicants reluctant to go out in public to interview? Did districts decide to limit the number of applicants? Did applicant pools simply dry up?

At least part of the answer seems to be that beginning in Week 12, districts as a whole posted fewer jobs than they did in prior years.

That’s a noticeable shift from 2018 and 2019, and the line correlates with how many districts posted jobs — a number that also declined in Week 12 and remains lower than the previous two years.

However — and this is where it gets interesting — it appears that not all districts are responding to the crisis in the same way. Districts as a whole posted fewer jobs, and fewer districts posted jobs, but those districts who were hiring were doing so at similar rates to the past two years:

We can see even more noteworthy data when we look at the number of jobs filled.

Although there was a slight dip in Week 12, the trend bounced back and is now at similar levels to previous school years. Fewer districts were posting jobs, fewer jobs were posted, but roughly the same number of jobs were filled compared to 2018 and 2019.

And (drumroll, please) take a look at the average number of days it takes to fill jobs posted:

2020 appears to be an anomaly, and since the beginning of the year the average days to fill have been lower than previous years, so it’s unlikely COVID-19 is responsible for that trend. However, it’s interesting that in Week 11 the average time to fill drops even faster than before.

How job applicants are faring during the COVID-19 shutdown

Applicants to jobs at school districts have noticed the change as well. An overwhelming majority of respondents to a survey on K12JobSpot (data collected between April 6 and April 21) said that COVID-19 has impacted their job search.

Has your job search been affected by COVID-19?

The “why” is especially compelling. When asked “How has our job search been affected by COVID-19?” more than half of respondents said that districts have delayed or frozen hiring. Others noted challenges presented by physical distance, uncertainty, loss of a job or job opportunity, or said that they are looking for remote work.

How has your job been affected by COVID-19?

How has hiring gone for you?

What have you noticed about hiring in your school system since states began shutting down? Take our instant poll and let us know your experience.

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.

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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

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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.

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.

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Elise Ozarowski

Elise is a writer and member of the award-winning content team at Frontline Education. A former member of Frontline’s events team, she is passionate about making connections, whether that be in person at events, online via social media or directly in her writing.