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Students vs. Staff: Who’s Absent More?

We know that learning suffers when students or their teachers are absent. Yet the focus is often only on student attendance — especially daily attendance rates, which can affect school funding. But what about staff absences?

We revisited pre-pandemic absentee data with fresh eyes to see what your district might be able to do reduce absenteeism among employees requiring a substitute in today’s classrooms.

The Skinny on Absentee Data

Frontline Research & Learning Institute data from the 2013-2014 school year revealed that nearly 30 percent of employees requiring a substitute (what we’re calling “teachers” or “staff” here) are chronically absent, compared to only 14 percent of students.

Two caveats:

The Department of Education (DOE) sets “chronic absenteeism” at 15 or more absences in a school year for students and 10 absences for teachers.
Teacher absences are sometimes driven by school- or district-sponsored activities, like professional development. Excluding those events, chronic absenteeism among staff was 21.7%.

But no matter what, it’s clear to see that student and teacher absences add up to a lot of lost learning opportunities. Informed by these numbers, we can consider what you can do to keep your schools humming along, day in and day out.

No matter what, we can see that student and teacher absences add up to a lot of lost learning opportunities.

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A Post-Pandemic Take on Staff Absences

How has life changed since that data was released? In the 2020 school year, Covid-19 sent districts into a crisis. Many institutions — certainly not just schools — learned more about public health than we ever anticipated. So, understandably, attitudes towards staff absences may have shifted to reflect more of a “if you’re sick, stay home” policy rather than the old “fight through it” mindset. However, while that make work just fine for other industries, in education, you know that students show up to classrooms each day — and they need a teacher when they do. So, as a district or building leader pressed between these two realities, what are the best steps to take to promote the health of your staff while ensuring a rigorous and consistent learning experience for your students? Let’s take a look.

Focus on Student and Staff Health

There’s no magic cure for reducing absences and saving instructional time in your schools.

Strengthen retention methods that make your school a great place to work
Ensure that schools are as clean as possible
Improve the quality of school ventilation systems
Continue health-related efforts like hand-washing programs
Have accurate data on absentee numbers to support conversations with staff

Hopefully, taking action in some of these areas can help reclaim instructional time and keep everyone healthy and in the classroom.

Manage Teacher Absences Strategically

The first step to reducing the impact of teacher absences on student learning is to reliably track employee attendance. This will give you the visibility you need to address absenteeism before it becomes an issue — you may find that certain employees are absent more often than not, or during particular times, sparking a constructive conversation. Or, you may find that specific schools in the district see higher absence rates than others, and can start exploring why.

Finally, you can examine your school or district’s absence data to see if professionally related absences are making the issue worse. If that’s the case, you can plan ahead to provide educators with plenty of professional learning opportunities and support — without causing a substitute shortage.

Keep Student Learning Going

Then, when teachers have to be absent — whether due to illness, PD or anything else — make sure that a qualified, prepared substitute is ready to fill in and keep students learning. Help them get ready with substitute-specific training courses for success in the classroom.

There you have it — with a strategic approach to lower absence rates and uninterrupted student learning, you’re on track to save more instructional time.

How to Create Strengths-based IEPs

*Key points from Carol Kosnitsky’s blog post, presented by Laura Materi, Frontline Education.

If asked, special educators can describe a range of characteristics about their students, emphasizing both strengths and needs. However, when asked to self-assess the Individualized Education Programs they’ve written, they often find limited information about their students’ strengths — and a lot of information about student weaknesses. This is an eye-opener for teachers who pride themselves on being effective advocates for their students.

Strengths-based IEPs are Essential

Everyone knows the IEP meeting is taking place because the student has a disability that adversely affects their education. Everyone also knows a student’s strengths can be leveraged to support self-esteem and growth. This knowledge is essential to the development of a high-quality IEP — but this section is skimmed over in many IEPs, leaving vital information on table. This is so wrong for so many reasons:

If we want kids to increase their participation in their IEPs and help them develop resilience and growth mindsets, we must reframe how we describe their assets and needs in both words and actions.
If we want parents to increase their participation in their child’s IEP, we need to do a better job of demonstrating we believe their kids are more than their disabilities!
If we want to increase the use of high-probability strategies, we must be clearer on what a student can do and what we want them to do next!

Strengths, Interests and Preferences

So, how can we shift from IEPs based on deficits to IEPs based on strengths? Let’s take a lesson from the “transition planning” playbook by engaging each student to consider their strengths, interests and preferences (S-I-P). Why? Because we know that, as students develop self-awareness, they are better able to set goals and determine what is required to achieve those goals. It also allows educators to intentionally use this information to better support the student. If we know this to be true for transition-age students, why not apply this for all students, regardless of age?

To reverse the current trend, cast a wide net to identify student strengths, interests, preferences, personal attributes and personal accomplishments, and consider the various types of strengths we all possess. Let’s look at some examples:

Strengths

The student excels at — James is highly regarded by his peers as a leader.
The student does at grade/age level — Rachael can make appropriate inferences when reading grade level text.
The student does relatively well — Stephen’s auditory comprehension is a relative strength when compared with reading comprehension.

Interests

Knowledge of student interests allows teachers to help students make personal connections to the activity at hand. These connections help students sustain their efforts, and often help them persevere through challenges that might otherwise overwhelm them. Think about the child interested in space, who perseveres in reading complex text on the topic even though he struggles with comprehension, or the student who loves sports and can relate it to batting statistics even though he has a math disability.

Preferences

Knowledge of student preferences allows teachers to create choices for students. Some students prefer to work alone; others are drawn to group work. Some students prefer to read text in hard copy; others prefer reading on a screen. Increasing options for choice-making is an evidenced-based practice that leads to increased engagement in the learning process. For example, a student may be willing to take greater academic risk and delve deeper into a topic when given the choice to make an oral vs. written presentation. That doesn’t mean the student won’t have to demonstrate his writing skills at other times, but if the primary purpose of the task is not about writing, providing choice can be very powerful.

Are your IEPs aligned to State Standards?

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Reframing Our Thoughts and Processes

A well-written IEP is the product of a well-executed process. Everyone can work toward shifting from deficit-based to strengths-based IEPs.

Prior to the IEP Meeting:

Provide students with explicit time to identify their strengths, interests and preferences. This ensures their voice is included in their IEP, and serves the dual purpose of on-going self-awareness and self-advocacy training.
Give parents guiding questions to consider about S-I-Ps. They bring the unique perspective of seeing their child in multiple non-school environments.

During the IEP Meeting:

Begin every IEP meeting with a discussion on S-I-Ps. Go around the table and have everyone contribute with examples.
Even if the student is not present, bring their thoughts from your prep sessions. A student’s own words will always have a more powerful effect on the adults in the room then the special educator’s.
Relate subsequent sections of the IEP back to the S-I-Ps. Reframe statements that are deficit-based to strengths-based whenever possible. Talk about what the student can do and what the student will do next.

The Final IEP

All language in the IEP must be objective and, in some way, move the planning discussion forward. Reframe negative statements into objective statements. For example:

Negative Statement
“Sam frequently misbehaves and is violent.”

Objective Statement
“When frustrated, Sam may throw objects or push over his chair.”

Tell the Right Story

Nothing here should be construed as sugar-coating. The IEP process would not be happening at all if the student did not have identified needs and challenges. However, we have opportunities to Tell the Right Story — that this child is complex and has a jagged profile which includes needs as well as assets and talents. How we choose to emphasize, organize and describe them can make a powerful difference.

Developing IEP Goals? Check out core concepts and best practices

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How Special Education Teachers Spend Their Work Day

It’s not breaking news that the administrative side of working in special education can be overwhelming. But now we can quantify the approximate value of “overwhelming” — it amounts to several hours of each teacher’s time lost to paperwork — every week. That adds up fast.^[1]

Teacher Time is in Short Supply

Special education teachers (SETs) shoulder a large part of the paperwork burden because they work so closely with students. Despite efforts to emphasize instruction and one-on-one opportunities with special needs students, paperwork still presents a real challenge.^[2]

Because this issue is so significant on a national level, the U.S. Department of Education attempted to alleviate the administrative burden of IDEA by developing pilot programs and creating model forms to help streamline the IEP preparation process.

In 2016, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a survey of special education teachers and administrators in 37 states to measure the effect of the DOE’s efforts. The review included a survey that identified tasks that teachers consistently flagged as being particularly burdensome, even after DOE support was implemented. Many of these tasks fall to special education teachers:^[3]

Preparing IEP documents
Focusing on compliance
Identifying students with special needs and determining eligibility
Monitoring or reporting student progress
Documenting behavioral problems

Getting a Closer Look at the Data

A good bit of research has been conducted over the past several years, focusing on how teacher time is impacted by the high level of IDEA-related paperwork. When you look closely, it’s clear that the administrative side of K-12 special education does take up a huge amount of each academic year.^[4]

And administrative tasks don’t only take up teacher time. Students are affected as well, in the form of general and special education paperwork that overflows into classroom time.^[5]

With high school students spending only about a quarter of their day on educational activities — including class time — and teachers spending less than a quarter of class time on instruction, finding a way to more effectively support teachers in paperwork management would free up more class time to help struggling learners.

How This Data Can Help Us Improve

There are good reasons for the complex administrative requirements related to special education data collection and compliance management, not the least of which is high-quality IEP creation. However, the data shows that more time spent on paperwork can mean less time spent on instruction — and less time spent on instruction increases the risk that students won’t receive all the benefits of those high-quality IEPs.

The good news is, technology is making a positive impact. Download the full data sheet to see how.

[1] Suter, Jesse C.; Giangreco, Michael F. (2009). Numbers that count: Exploring Special Education and Paraprofessional Service Delivery in Inclusion-Oriented Schools. The Journal of Special Education v43 N2. P 81-93

[2] Vannest, Kimberly J.; Hagan-Burke, Shanna (2009). Remedial and Special Education 31(2):126-142.

[3] GA 1.13:GAO-16-25 (2016). Special education, state and local-imposed requirements complicate federal efforts to reduce administrative burden: report to congressional requesters.

[4] Suter, Jesse C.; Giangreco, Michael F. (2009). Numbers that count: Exploring Special Education and Paraprofessional Service Delivery in Inclusion-Oriented Schools. The Journal of Special Education v43 N2. P 81-93.

[5] Vannest, Kimberly J.; Hagan-Burke, Shanna; Parker, Richard I.; Soares, Denise A. (2011). Special Education Teacher Time Use in Four Types of Programs. Journal of Educational Research, v104 n4 p219-230 2011

Learning Management Systems (LMS) versus Professional Development Management (PDMS)

Though many organizations have heard the term “learning management system” (LMS), only those in the educational space have heard the term “professional development management system” (PDMS), and for good reason: the two do not perform the same functions or meet the same objectives. That matters to any educational organization considering which type of system they need.

Let’s take a look at the differences.

Who are learning management systems built for?

Learning management systems were developed for corporate needs — initially to train internal employees in compliance, as well as in job skills and to further professional growth later on.

LMS platforms provide high-level content management capabilities, organizational capabilities (like groupings and sub-groupings) and at times, even some simplified content authoring capabilities. They track who does what and provide reporting on that transcript data.

What about professional development management systems?

Professional development management systems were developed by and for educational needs (primarily K-12), to support the growth of educators and to make it easy to track their progress toward meeting continuing education requirements.

This is no small task given that requirements for continuing education differ in every state, and “progress and growth”-related activities can include:

Live in-service days and workshops provided by the district, local education agencies and industry conferences
Professional learning community activities
Coaching and mentoring activities
Online learning activities

There are tightly defined requirements around lengths, formats, quality, instructors and assessments of these activities in order for them to “count” toward teacher continuing education and re-licensure.

In other words, professional development management systems must track thousands of employees doing hundreds of different things, and all of that data has to generate a clear record that ties to state requirements around teacher quality and growth.

Which is right for my district? LMS or PDMS?

Each district is different, but generally, teacher evaluation needs to go far beyond corporate “performance management.” Corporate performance is not state-required or constrained, and there are fewer legal requirements — if any at all, depending on the industry — around how companies evaluate their employees.

Teacher evaluation, on the other hand, is driven by specific state guidelines and must be tracked and reported on by every learning organization in the state. It’s not just a matter of dotting i’s and crossing t’s, as it often is in the business world.

Even a comprehensive LMS is not built to tie directly to a sophisticated and customizable teacher evaluation system. The right system needs to guarantee that teacher professional development can and will be delivered in a targeted, personalized manner that will ensure educators receive the learning support they need to improve and positively impact students.

Can a good LMS still help us meet our PD goals?

Yes, learning management capabilities are important to successfully meet your PD management goals, but learning management is actually one small component in the overall picture.

All of these other pieces of the complete learning cycle matter:

Identification of teacher needs (observation and evaluation)
Selection and deployment of a wide range of PD learning opportunities (learning targeting and access)
Tracking of progress and completion of those activities
Participation in and tracking of PLCs (peer support) and instructional coaching/reflection (mentor support)
Subsequent identification of further teacher progress

Unless your provider or internal systems can give you the ability to identify, deploy, track and report on all those aspects of teacher evaluation and professional development management, the offering is going to fall short of your desired outcomes.

A system built with native K-12 knowledge is necessary.

Supreme Court Ruling on Special Education: What’s Next for Schools?

The question of whether or not our country needs a new standard for supporting special education students has now been answered by a unanimous and affirmative decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 0-8 decision, the Supreme Court sided in favor of expanding the rights for children with disabilities. But immediately following the court’s ruling last month, a series of new questions — both from inside and outside of the education community — started to pop up in the news and on social media.

To understand these new questions and address possible next steps for schools, it’s important to understand the history and conventions associated with public schools and special education.

A Brief History of Events Leading Up to the Ruling

1975: Congress enacts the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) to ensure that children with disabilities have access to an education and legal due process. Congress builds an elaborate system of procedural safeguards into the law to protect the rights of children and their parents.¹

1990: The EAHCA is amended and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This amendment calls for many changes to the old law — districts are now required to measure educational outcomes and assist students with disabilities in transitioning from high school to postsecondary life.^{2, 3}

2004: President Bush signs the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, a reauthorization and revision of IDEA, intended to “help children learn better by promoting accountability for results, enhancing parent involvement, using proven practices and materials, providing more flexibility, and reducing paperwork burdens for teachers, states and local school districts.” ⁴

2015: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver hears Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District. The case centers around the experience of Endrew F., a boy diagnosed with autism and ADHD, whose parents transferred him to private school after they felt his public school didn’t provide him the necessary support he needed in fourth grade. Endrew’s parents seek reimbursement for his private school tuition, feeling that reimbursement is warranted under federal law — but the court rejects the reimbursement, stating that the public school Endrew had attended had met its obligations under IDEA.⁵

2016: In September, the Supreme Court announces it will heed the recommendation of the federal government and hear Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, thus taking on the challenge of deciding the minimum actions that public schools must take to help learning-disabled students.⁶

2017: After hearing the case, the Supreme Court rules in favor of Endrew and his parents, and implements a new educational standard for students with special needs. Their decision states that schools must now do more than provide special education students with a “merely more than de minimis” education.⁷

How Will Schools Will Move Forward?

The bar has now been raised for how schools assist students with disabilities, but what does this new normal look like for schools on a year-to-year and even day-to-day basis? The Supreme Court’s decision is understandably open-ended in some respects — because every child is unique and needs individualized support — but it does note that a child’s IEP must be “appropriately ambitious.” Public school advocates emphasize that schools already meet this standard.

Even though schools currently provide special education students with a free and appropriate public education, this new standard could change the way states and districts approach their special education programs. But given the flexibility of the new standard, it isn’t yet clear what changes will take place.

Will this heightened standard mean schools need to implement new (and more specific) practices for each special education student? These new practices may differ from current practices; if so, the shift from one way of operating to the next could be costly for schools from a general resource perspective.

New benchmarks would then need to be consistently measured and evaluated by special education staff following implementation, potentially raising the level of oversight required in a part of the education system currently experiencing a teacher shortage. Supporters of public schools say that the establishment, measurement and assessment of new standards would further stretch the already underfunded public school system.

An Important Silver Lining

The debate sparked by this case is a focal point for our community, not only because it has the potential to impact our daily lives, but also because our children are so important to us. We want to ensure they have everything they need to be successful. Despite the real challenges that lay ahead for districts, schools and individuals, this case has once again brought to light an important national priority: our commitment to protecting our children and planning for their continued success. This shared goal is something for which we can all be truly grateful as we forge ahead.

[1] https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/history.html
[2] http://www.apa.org/about/gr/issues/disability/idea.aspx
[3] https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/leg/idea/history.html
[4] https://www2.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/tb-discipline.pdf
[5] http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/15-827-opinion-below.pdf
[6] https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-29/supreme-court-says-it-will-hear-special-education-case
[7] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-827_0pm1.pdf

The Case Against Cutting Off Our Teacher Talent Pipeline

This article was originally posted on Real Clear Education and is republished here with permission.

President Trump’s budget proposes massive spending cuts to critical—but often overlooked—funding for the preparation, training and recruitment of high-quality teachers. Title IIa of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, funded at over $2 billion for the last 15 years, including upwards of $2.9 billion under the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act, would be cut to nothing.

To put the cuts in perspective, consider this: The cost of replacing and retraining workers for any business is high. Employers often peg recruiting and retraining costs at about 50% of an employee’s annual salary, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. That means the cost to replace the average teacher could be $22,500 or more.

School districts nationwide employ over three million teachers at an average salary of $45,000. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 17 percent of teachers leave the profession within the first five years. Another two to three percent retire each year. Many more change jobs, move across district lines or are placed into classrooms for new grade levels or subject areas. Meanwhile, student enrollment continues to climb. So at a moment when recruiting and training great teachers is essential, the president’s proposal slashes funding critical to building a teacher-talent pipeline.

Sadly, the cuts also come at a time when federal policy is driving a shift toward increased rigor and accountability when it comes to improving teachers’ practice. Last year’s bipartisan reform of federal education spending – the Every Student Succeeds Act – took a big step toward reforming the way that states and district spend federal dollars to prepare and support great teachers. Authors of the Every Student Succeeds Act included a focus only on activities that are “…sustained intensive, collaborative, job-embedded, data-driven, and classroom-focused…” [S.1177, §8002 (42)]. Gone are the days of stand-alone, one-and-done presentations or workshops. New federal criteria reflect the state of the art in educational research.

When the law was written, we wondered whether the newly specific federal definition of professional learning was a departure from typical practice in schools across the United States and, if so, how it might influence what schools, districts and states did next. We decided to investigate.

We gathered anonymous data from the last five school years from a representative sample of school districts across the country and analyzed the extent to which current professional learning meets the criteria set forth in the law. Researchers at the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins helped ensure our methods were sound and reviewed our findings. In Bridging the Gap: Paving the Pathway from Current Practice to Exemplary Professional Learning, we chronicle our abysmal findings: over 80 percent of professional learning offerings over the last five years should be characterized as low-quality.

It would be easy to say that these data are damning. If federal funding supports low-quality training, why continue invest? The answer lies in the other 20 percent.

Our research revealed that school districts throughout the nation are engaged in on-going efforts to restructure and improve their systems for teacher professional learning. Districts like Pitt County Schools in North Carolina are making progress toward increasing the amount of time educators can spend truly mastering skills and content by diversifying learning formats and carving more time out of in-service periods for professional learning. Leaders at Harrison Central School District in New York are collaborating with teachers to solve real world challenges such as being relevant to students from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.

These and other districts recognize the need to provide as much high-quality support to their teachers as possible—but they also struggle with limited resources to engage in the work required to develop and provide good professional learning. The new federal law is putting “teeth” behind federal funding to model what works and reduce waste and return power to state and local leaders. The president’s budget, however, cuts off these reform efforts at the knees.

Congressional leaders would be wise to consider the long-term costs of short-term cuts. We are already faced with a shrinking pipeline of teachers in subjects critical to our economic growth and competitiveness. To achieve quality, school and district leaders require support for transitioning away from current practice toward new learning opportunities that are proven effective and meet the criteria in the law. Federal investments in recruiting, preparing and selecting great teachers provide critical support to fuel the alignment of our teacher talent pipeline with the demands our students will face in a dynamic economy. Instead of slashing funding, let’s first give the new law a chance to work.

5 Keys to Understanding Online Learning

Leveraging online learning to support the training and development of your employees.

You’ve probably heard a lot of terms around online learning like synchronous and asynchronous, on demand, blended, eLearning, and if you’re really paying attention, LMS and SCORM. It probably feels like a lot to learn for something that’s just an augmentation to face-to-face learning, right?

Well, maybe not. The truth is that making sure that you select the right type of online learning to support your online education organization is critical to getting the most benefit out of it.

#1: What Are the Benefits of Online Learning?

There are very specific reasons that organizations around the world have opted to include online learning for teachers and other employees. The benefits of leveraging online learning that works include:

The ability to provide your teachers with targeted and personalized professional development
Access to a variety of topics to cover gaps in available learning
The ability to provide on demand courses that are flexible to staff schedules
Affordability — online learning typically saves cost
Online learning is easy to use
It is a trackable form of learning, giving administrators the accountability they need

#2: What Are the Terms?

Terms that you should understand when considering online learning options include:

Synchronous – Examples include webinars, Google Hangouts, Skype, forums, chats and discussions.
Asynchronous – These are on-demand courses that are self-paced.
Instructor-led – Courses that have instructors. Not necessarily synchronous.
Course – A true lesson with learning outcomes, instructional activities and assessment. Can include any media including audio, video, animation and simulation.
Video – Not a course. A video is a recording and is not instructional without additional prompts or assessment.
LMS – Learning management system, the delivery system for online courses.
SCORM – The protocol that allows courses to plug and play in any LMS as well as track learner progress.

Understanding these terms will help you to select online learning that is the right fit for your learners’ needs.

#3: Learner, Access and Topics

There are three critical components one needs to consider when selecting online learning to fit your needs:

Who is the learner?
Any provider of online learning always starts the creation of online courses with this question in mind. The learner might be a licensed teacher or administrator, or she might be a nurse, food service or transportation worker. What’s important to understand when selecting online learning courses is, “Does this provider understand the learners in my organization? Have they provided similar online courses to similar learners in the past? Is the length of the courses appropriate? Is the navigation straightforward?” And ultimately, “Will my learners be able to use these courses?”

How will learners access the technology?
Are your learners all going to access the online courses from the workplace, or will they sometimes access them from home? Is the provider a cloud provider whose courses are available 24/7 from any location? Are the courses accessible on a mobile device as well as a desktop or laptop? Is the technology they will be using the latest and greatest, or is it a little older? Can the provider’s courses handle that kind of range in delivery needs? It’s important that a provider’s courses have all the bells and whistles that contribute to the learning experience, while excluding those that aren’t useful or that will weigh down your technology infrastructure. Just because an online course is jazzy doesn’t mean that it’s going to provide the best learning opportunity for your employees.

Do the topics offered cover our needs?
You have to ask yourself which employees will be using the course libraries. Will it be only a subset that needs a very specific topic or will it be everyone? Does the provider you’re considering have the courses that you need? In the K12 world, topics include: safety and prevention, onboarding of new employees, substitute teacher training, educational technology and educator professional development covering everything from classroom management and instructional strategies to content areas to working with diverse groups of students. You’ll need a provider library that covers all the online training and learning topics that your learners need.

#4: Compliance vs. the Learning Experience

Now let’s move on to discuss an important and often confusing issue: compliance vs. the learning experience.

The most common question for administrators considering online learning is, “How will I know that my employees did the work?” This is a reasonable question given that you typically need proof that learners have taken courses for compliance reasons or so you can issue professional development credit. A good online course should provide you with peace of mind that the learner actually engaged with the course and understood the material. This leads to courses that are fairly constrained, with navigation that prevents learner “click-through,” pages that are tracked, and in most cases some form of assessment that the learner must pass. This kind of course architecture provides administrators with incontrovertible proof that the learner did the work. In other words, from a compliance perspective, you’re covered.

But such constrained courses may not offer the ideal learning experience. As we know, learners differ and some may want to “jump around” the lessons or skip material that is already well-understood. They may want to be able to enter their own information or reflections that can be exported or saved and studied later. They may even want to have different information served up to them based on their answers to assessment questions.

Unfortunately, over the past decade of online learning, compliance and this type of robust, open learning experience have been fairly mutually exclusive.

The good news is, that’s all about to change, and Frontline Education is right at the forefront of the changes to come.

#5: The Future of Online Learning

We’re at a very exciting time for online learning. There is a revolution taking place involving a new API called the “Experience” or “xAPI.” Put simply, the xAPI makes it possible for us to gather much more behavioral data about a learner’s interaction with a course, even if the course is not constrained.

For example, you can gain insights about how employees navigated courses: “Hey, it seems like most teachers really spent a lot of time on this topic. I wonder if we should make this a focus for the entire district?”
You’ll also be able to gauge assessment results: “The newer teachers seem to struggle with the courses on UDL. Perhaps more mentor involvement in lesson planning could help.”
You can see if a teacher is being asked to complete material he or she already knows: “Hmmmm… this teacher didn’t really read most of the material, but she passed the quiz with flying colors. Maybe this wasn’t exactly the course that she needed.”

And these are just a few examples of what we’ll be able to know and do using xAPI.

Take-Away

For learning organizations looking to support the professional growth of their employees and impact their students, it’s more important than ever to pay attention to what’s happening in the world of online learning for teachers and all K-12 employees.

Spring Planning for Substitute Programs

Spring has sprung, but there’s no time to sit back and smell the roses.

With data from the Frontline Research & Learning Institute, we’ve found that the next few months tend to be a very busy time for substitute programs. If this year is anything like last year, for example, fewer employees may be out sick, but teachers and other staff may begin taking more vacation and personal days.

Don’t be caught unprepared — take steps now to avoid low fill rates and minimize the impact of teacher absences on student learning.

Know Your Data

I know, we’ve said it over and over: understanding your school or district’s data is the first step toward a stronger absence and substitute management strategy. But it’s worth repeating — you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and having data at your fingertips allows you to ask the right questions and continually improve your district’s processes.

“There was a bit of a shock factor when we showed everyone how many days were being missed… The data has been amazing and opened everyone’s eyes. It’s not just about getting more substitute bodies in here. How do we handle discretionary days off where the district has control over professional development? Are there better days during the week to schedule things? We’re able to make smarter decisions when we schedule things now, which has been fabulous.”

– Lindsay Pfister, Director of Human Resources, West Jefferson Hills School District

Collaborate & Coordinate

Plenty of school- or district-sponsored activities can contribute to your overall teacher absence rates: professional development, field trips or sporting events, just to name a few. And although these absences are often driven by school leaders or the Curriculum & Instruction team, the burden of finding substitute tends to fall on Human Resources, the principal or administrative assistants.

Remember that everyone in your school district shares the same goal of supporting student learning. So, sit down with other departments. Share your district’s absence data. Look for collaborative solutions and ways to work together more effectively, for the benefit of your students. It is possible for your schools to support these activities without experiencing a substitute teacher crisis.

“We’re broadening our collaboration with not only our professional development department but other departments that typically use substitutes, like Athletics, so that we can really coordinate and improve our fill rates so that we can deliver the professional development that we need but also cover classrooms.”

– Skye Duckett, Deputy Chief Human Resources Officer, Atlanta Public Schools

Communicate

Finally, don’t forget the cornerstone of any successful initiative: communication. Ask your teachers and staff to report absences well in advance whenever possible — for example, absences for vacation or professional development are often scheduled or ahead of time. But last year, 30% of professionally-related absences were reported within four days, dropping the likelihood of finding a substitute to 85%.

Talk to your substitutes about planning ahead, too. If you know that Fridays are high-absence days, or a local university is holding its graduation ceremony on a certain day and many employees will be out, tell them!

“We try very hard to look at our data and trends. We know that certain dates are really high absentee dates and we plan for it by letting our substitutes know ahead of time. We contact our sub pool and say, ‘our local university’s graduation date is on this date for the semester. We anticipate a large number of absences.’ We let our subs know ahead of time.”

– Jeanine Johnson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Clarksville-Montgomery County School System

A New Generation of Teachers

What’s bigger than the Baby Boom and poised to take over the workforce? A new generation of teachers: millennials.

Born between 1980 and 1996, this multi-tasking, technologically-inclined group will make up 75 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2025. In education, those numbers could be even higher, as 1.6 million new teachers will be hired over the next several years as veteran educators retire.

But relatively few millennials choose teaching as a career — a trend that doesn’t look promising for school districts looking to continue hiring from deep applicant pools and keep student/teacher ratios low. It’s increasingly important that district and school leaders develop strategies targeted at recruiting, hiring and retaining millennial teachers.

“One of the national trends that we have been very conscious of, and bracing for, is that Baby Boomers are supposed to be leaving our profession in droves soon. Unfortunately the colleges and universities right now can’t keep up with the demand. That’s a challenge we are facing and will be facing over the next few years.”
Rebecca Partlow, Chief Personnel Officer, Rock Hill Schools

How To Recruit Millennials

To hire more millennial teachers, you have to find them first. Ask yourself the following questions:

How are you reaching professionals in their twenties?

Millennials probably will not find a job from the classifieds section of the newspaper. Instead, recruit from this candidate pool by:

Forming a close partnerships with local colleges and teacher prep programs
Engaging with education graduates online
Ensuring web pages and job boards are actively refreshed and managed
Using social media to market your online job boards and your district website

How are you reaching students in college and prep programs to encourage teaching as a profession?

Education has become an unpopular major for undergraduate students, and this trend is unlikely to reverse on its own. You will need to actively network with local students while they’re still in school to talk up a teaching career with your district.

Amy Holcombe, Executive Director of Talent Development at Guilford County Schools, says:

“…We are working with the deans and the department chairs of the STEM departments — not the education department, but the STEM departments —We’re educating them about working in the field of education, giving them site-based experiences at our schools and allowing them to explore that as a career option. If they are interested in pursuing that as a career option, we have an in-house licensure program, an alt-cert program for non-teachers seeking to be teachers, and then we’re bringing those recent college graduates straight out of the universities that we partner with into the classrooms, and we’re helping them gain licensure.”
Amy Holcombe, Executive Director of Talent Development at Guilford County Schools

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Field Guide to Recruiting Millennials

How To Hire Millennials

Once you’ve expanded your recruiting reach by finding more teacher candidates online, ~~the work isn’t over~~ continue the work. Take a look at your hiring process, too. Younger job-seekers expect a streamlined online hiring process, and ~~may simply~~ will likely avoid applying to organizations that still rely on paper.

It should be easy for prospective teachers to find and apply to open positions through your school district’s website — otherwise, they may look elsewhere for a teaching job. Make sure that the hiring process is free of snags, unnecessary delays and paperwork, or you may find your hiring pipeline isn’t staying as full as you would like.

How To Retain Millennials

Retention is just as important — if not more important — than recruitment. You don’t want your school district to fall into an endlessly repeating cycle of “recruit, hire and replace.” Instead, focus your efforts on implementing a positive cycle of meaningful feedback and targeted professional learning.

This should include:

A comprehensive induction program to welcome new teachers into the school
A mentoring program to help them succeed in their new role
Continued support for their development
Rich growth and learning experiences that help them grow their practice

With these programs in place, you’re likely to see a lower turnover and higher employee satisfaction. With millennials in particular, you will need to ensure that the professional development you offer is targeted to their needs and directly applicable to their work.

Matthew Gutierrez, Assistant Superintendent of Employee Services at Plano ISD, says:

“Millennials want to grow quickly, and they want instant gratification… They want to grow and they want to become leaders, so what we have to do is keep them challenged and invest in teachers … because we want them to stay beyond two or three years.”
Matthew Gutierrez, Assistant Superintendent of Employee Services at Plano ISD

Recruit, hire, retain and develop: four steps to ensuring that your classrooms are staffed by exemplary teachers — millennial or otherwise.

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Cyber Security in K-12: Is Your School District Prepared?

In a matter of decades, we’ve leapt forward a millennium in cyber technology. In the digital age, the development of new cyber tools and increasingly useful applications hasn’t shown much sign of slowing down. Unfortunately, the inherent risks haven’t either.

With so much sensitive information necessarily online, school districts must ensure protections are put in place in case of cyber malfeasance. But with ever-changing technology, it seems like some best practices are aging in dog years. How do we keep up?

State of the K-12 Cyber Landscape

The recent explosion of Edtech has drawn the majority of school districts to adopt new tools for data analytics, cloud storing, and PD. The benefits of this technology are huge, but they do come with risks. Over the last three years, there has been a definite increase in the number of K-12 security incidents.

One reason is because many school districts are easy targets. Districts often lack cyber security resources necessary to keep up with the evolving risks of cyber technology, or they don’t understand or take advantage of some of the security capabilities of the programs they use. So, for attackers, these school districts often represent the “low hanging fruit.”

A more troubling reason for the increase in incidents is the value of student information. A child’s ID and personal health information is lucrative on dark web markets. Criminals can get years of use out of a minor’s information before they reach the age where credit applications and other processes are initiated that might tip them off to the identity theft.

Government Response

Because of these risks and incidents, State legislatures have begun introducing new regulations to protect student data. As of September 2016, 49 states and the District of Columbia (all but Vermont) have introduced at least one student data privacy bill, and 36 states have at least one new student privacy law.

Districts now bear the responsibility both to put security measures in place to protect data privacy and also to validate that security through compliance.

Understanding the Cyber Kill Chain

With the increasing sophistication of cyber criminal tactics, school districts need to reassess what they can do to foil attacks before it’s too late.

Most attacks begin when a district user opens a phishing message. Through that, attackers can gain access to the user’s account information and gain access to further, more sensitive information. On average, it takes districts 146 days to identify these breaches, by which time the attackers have had their run of district information.

Building Your Defense – Key Success Factors

Don’t go it alone. Everybody in the district is responsible for their share of protecting district information.
It’s all about the data. Obviously, hardware, software and networks are all part of security, but only insofar as they protect the data. So, district employees need to understand how to handle that data with care.
Focus on people and processes first. Make sure district employees understand their personal responsibilities and how they’re involved in security processes.
Build security into your daily workflows. If it’s tacked on to the end of a task, it will get overlooked during crunch time.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. How do you know your defense is successful? You need to put in place processes that help show what you’ve prevented (such as phishing emails) and that inform how you allocate defense resources.
Balance prevention with detection and response. One way or another, attackers will get through. Make sure you have processes in place to help you identify and consolidate those compromises.
Communicate in terms of mission, regulatory obligations and dollars, so that your stake holders understand your defense needs.
Develop human firewalls. You want everybody in your district to think through what they do and how they can help prevent data breaches. This is often produces the highest return on investment for districts seeking to protect their information.

Building Your Security Program Using NIST’s CSF

Build a cross-functional team and get leadership support. Create a committee with members from across the district to make sure all areas are being protected, and connect that team with tools and processes already in place.
Initiate data discovery and system classification. Understanding where your data is and what kind of programs can access it will help inform how you need to protect that data.
Perform a risk assessment and gap analysis, so you can identify where you’re most likely to suffer a data breach. NIST’s Cyber Security Framework (CSF) will help you analyze your defense needs construct thorough defense system.
Package tasks into actionable and measureable projects. NIST’s CSF will help you identify these projects.
Perform milestone reviews and adjust. Cyber risks will continue to evolve. Consistent, regular reviews and adjustments will be critical for ongoing data security.

Curbing the Teacher Shortage: How To Take a Retention-First Approach To Recruiting

Recruitment & Retention: A Two-fold Approach

Every year, sixteen percent of educators leave their school, and half of those teachers leave the profession altogether. That turnover puts administrators in a hard place: it can cost up to $18,000 to replace a teacher in a large urban district, and the recruitment and selection process for teachers can be a nightmare — especially for positions like STEM or special education.

So, when it comes to overcoming the teacher shortage, it’s not enough to recruit more applicants. You have to hire the right people and keep them around. Otherwise, you might end up with a revolving door of new teachers — an expensive problem that ultimately harms student achievement.

It’s time to stop the teacher shortage in its tracks by taking a retention-first approach to teacher recruitment. Here’s how.

Collect Information From Employees About Why They’re Leaving — Or Staying

First and foremost, determine where your school district stands by gathering as much data as possible. Exit surveys are a good tool for gathering feedback on why employees leave, but you can gain even more insight by conducting employee engagement and stay surveys as well. Get a deep understanding of how your staff feel about working in your schools and their reasons for staying — or leaving, as the case may be. Make sure to collect feedback from new employees too, especially on their experiences with onboarding.

Compare That Information To Your Current Retention Strategies

Are people leaving or staying for the reasons that you imagined? Are you incentivizing employees along lines that resonate with them and what they want?

Once you have plenty of employee feedback in hand, compare it to the policies and strategies already in place throughout your school district. Identify areas needing improvement in your district’s retention tactics and recognize which initiatives are successful. Then, look for ways to highlight your district’s strengths and shore up any gaps in your game plan.

Use Technology To Streamline Hiring and Onboarding

Hiring and onboarding go hand-in-hand with retention, and technology can help you improve those practices. A fantastic first impression is made in three parts:

A positive applicant experience
Streamlined hiring process
Stress-free onboarding phase

In addition, ensure that your onboarding procedures support a welcoming, collaborative work environment where employees feel confident and prepared for their first day. This might mean building up your school district’s mentoring program or holding more events for new hires to make them feel welcome.

Dig Into Recruiting and Retention Data

Now it’s time to talk about recruiting. Explore your district’s data and discover where your most promising applicants come from. And if possible, review connections between recruiting and retention data — where do you tend to find candidates who are most likely to stick around for a long career in your district? Then, direct your efforts toward those resources.

Be sure that your teacher recruiting efforts highlight how your district supports educators, too. This is a good time to channel your inner Rick Astley and make candidates understand that you’ll never give them up or let them down.

Celebrate Success

Throughout this, don’t forget to take a moment and recognize your achievements. The teacher shortage can be stressful, and you’re finding ways to curb it so that your district, and its students, can accomplish even more.

“Do not look at the teacher shortage as an obstacle. Challenge yourself that it’s an opportunity. We created the employee wellness program as a “do it yourself” program on pennies. We have increased engagement and productivity, and we’ve had some outstanding results with retaining our first-year teachers. It went up from 69% to 86% just in Year One, so I say it can be done. You just have to dig in and get to the hard work, and you have to be an active recruiter, not passive.”

Andy Koenigs, Associate Superintendent of Human Resources, Emporia Unified School District

A New Challenge: Paid Sick Days for Substitutes

Over the past few years, the number of jurisdictions passing paid sick day laws has risen rapidly. In 2006, only one passed a law mandating paid sick leave: San Francisco. But in 2016, three states, one county and ten cities passed sick day legislation.

These laws pose a compliance challenge to all employers, but can be particularly burdensome for K-12 organizations — particularly as they relate to variable-hour employees like substitutes, whose work schedules ebb and flow. Administering this process can be complex, time-consuming and flat-out expensive.

If your state or city passes one of these laws, will you be ready?

The Effects of Paid Sick Days for Substitutes

If your state or city implements a paid sick day law — or already has one in place — what can you expect?

Confusion in the central office

You’ll probably have a significant amount of confusion to contend with, at least in the beginning. Legislation generally isn’t written in an easily-digestible format that gives you the answers you need quickly, and figuring out how to put new processes in place (and keep them going) can lead to mix-ups and mistakes along the way.

Higher spending on substitute wages

On average, substitute wages already constitute 1% of a district’s budget. Paid sick days can mean more spending — especially since you may find yourself paying substitutes for not working. If you choose to provide each substitute with an allowance of sick days up front rather than parceling out sick time as it’s earned, you could be spending even more.

You can estimate how much it would cost your district to give each eligible substitute their sick leave days up front with this calculator:

Launch Paid Sick Leave Calculator

Scheduling difficulties

With substitute shortages across the country, many districts already struggle with their fill rates. Sick days might lead to substitutes canceling jobs at the last minute rather than trying to power through the day despite feeling ill. While you certainly don’t want sick employees (or substitutes) coming to work and spreading their illness to others, it can be frustrating to try and fill an absence at five in the morning.

Improved substitute morale

Paid sick days might bring more complexities to your substitute management process, but there’s a bright side too! You may find that substitutes are happier and feel more valued as part of the team in your district — leading to more productive days in the classroom. And, of course, when staff, substitutes and students stay home when they’re feeling under the weather, it helps prevent sickness from spreading.

Five Steps to Managing Paid Sick Days for Subs

If you’re responsible for managing sick days for substitutes in your district, don’t worry. Just follow these five steps and you’ll be on your way to stress-free sub management.

Step 1: Know the law.

Before doing anything, get a firm handle on the laws pertaining to your district. Enlist your organization’s legal team or outside counsel if necessary, and ensure that they’re involved in any policy you develop around sick leave.

You need to know which employees are exempt from the mandate (if any), if sick time can be used to care for dependents and loved ones and how much time must be given to eligible workers.

Make sure you consider both state-level and city-level regulations: for example, California mandates paid sick days at the state level, but allows localities like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and others to pass stricter regulations for employers in the city

Step 2: Conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

To stay compliant with paid sick leave laws, you have two options. You can provide every single substitute in your district with an allowance of sick days up front, regardless of how much they work — a very expensive way to go.

Or, you can allow substitutes to accrue sick leave based on time worked. You will need to track each substitute’s eligibility, sick leave accrual and sick leave usage. If you choose to track and record all of this yourself, take into account the increased workload this will place on you or others. Alternatively, you may opt to invest in technology that can manage paid sick days, eliminating the extra time and effort needed to manage the process manually.

Step 3: Implement a process.

Once you have decided on the most cost-efficient way to manage sick days for your employees and substitutes, work out how you will manage the process. This is where you’ll want to get into detail, especially if you don’t manage the entire process online. If you are tracking the amount of sick time accrued, how will you do so? Will you track and record substitutes’ actual time worked, or make an estimate based off their work schedule? Where will you record the amount of time each substitute has accrued against the sick days they have already taken? How often will it be updated?

Don’t forget to look beyond time tracking and accruals. When a substitute takes a sick day, you still need to find another qualified person to cover the absence — even at the last minute.

Step 4: Set clear expectations.

Once you have a process in place and documented policies that have been reviewed by your district’s legal counsel, make sure you communicate expectations to employees and substitutes. Be transparent about why you are instituting any changes — for example, if you did not track employee time electronically in the past, be clear that the changes are to ensure that they are given an accurate amount of accrued leave.

Step 5: Document your district’s compliance.

Hopefully, this step was covered earlier in your planning process, but it bears repeating. Make sure that you have a way to securely document your district’s compliance with any relevant labor laws, including paid sick leave.

Now you’re ready to tackle paid sick leave, stay compliant and keep your district running smoothly.

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