Confidently Manage Response to Intervention

Heather Evans:

Hello. Thank you very much for joining us today to learn about Frontline RTI. We know you are all busy people and we appreciate the opportunity to spend time with you to discuss how Frontline RTI can help your district.

I want to start off today by introducing your host. I am Heather Evans and I’m based out of the Dallas area and work with districts in Regions 7 through 12. Jason Stewart, Director of Education and Training, is with us today. Many of you probably know Jason from the years of excellent training and support. He has offered to our district partners across the state. We also have Carly Smith who is out of San Antonio and covers Regions 13 through 19, and lastly we have Patisu Plott who is from the Houston area, and works with Regions 1 through 6 and Region 20 districts.

I’d like to briefly touch on who we are. Since our launch in 1998, Frontline has focused on bringing the best-in-class solutions to the front line of education.

We believe in creating a true partnership with our districts, built on education. We have grown to serve more than 12,000 K-12 organizations and millions of educators. It is our commitment to easy to use technology and customer success that has sustained our 97% customer retention rate. We are very proud to be the number one solution in Texas for special programs, serving more than 800 customers, which include districts, cooperatives and charter schools.

Though we know this Google Earth map is quite busy, we wanted to provide you with a visual to really speak to our presence and longevity around the state. One of the many benefits to our widespread coverage in Texas and a real time saver for a district partners is being able to seamlessly transfer student records right through our Frontline solutions.

Frontline is committed to helping districts serve the whole child. We do this by offering solutions across special programs, including ARD, 504 Medicaid integration with TSBS, ChildFind, ELL/LPAC and of course RTI. There are many tremendous benefits to using Frontline across these departments. The districts that are most successful when using our solution are using them across all of the special programs. This allows for a true one-stop shop and helps create consistency while improving collaboration and communication across departments and campuses.

Next, I want to go over a few housekeeping items. The purpose of today’s webinar is to provide you with an overview of Frontline’s RTI solution and demonstrate the ways we can help your district. We know many of you joining us today, our current customers of ours, and we greatly appreciate your partnership. I do want to point out that today’s webinar is not designed to be a training session. With that being said, if you are already using our RTI solution, today’s webinar could certainly enlighten you as to what is currently at your fingertips and provide ideas on how to utilize our solution in your district. We are honored to have close to 200 people joining us this morning. What an incredible turnout. We know RTI is a hot topic around the state and we’re thrilled to have so many of you with us today. In order to keep the audio sounding the best. We have everyone muted except for your hosts.

We greatly value your feedback, so please feel free to send any thoughts and questions in the available Q and A section located on the right side of your screen. Our team will be monitoring these throughout the webinar. But, due to the number of participants, any questions asked throughout will be answered individually after the webinar.

I’m now going to go through today’s agenda. Take a moment to reflect on what your district is currently using, how is it working, and more importantly, how is it working for your students’ progress?

The main objective of today is to walk you through what Frontline offers to help your district with your RTI process and data management to ensure students are receiving the right support. Lastly, we will take time to reflect on how this would look for your district and what are the next steps.

Looking at these pictures, how do you think they relate to RTI?

Have you ever been buried in paperwork? Do you worry about staying on target with compliance? How are you currently collecting data in regards to measuring student progress? We know that RTI can be overwhelming, but we are here to help, and on that note, I’d like to introduce Jason Stewart and Carly Smith who will now be providing you with a high-level demonstration of Frontline’s RTI solution.

Carly Smith:

Thanks, Heather! And thanks so much for joining Jason and I today. With around 200 busy educators on the line. I’m going to dive right in. I’m curious, Jason, what type of technology is needed to use the Frontline RTI applications? What if I’m out and about on campus and not at my computer? Can I still access information?

Jason Stewart:

Hey, Carly. The Frontline RTI applications are 100% we- based. They’re not browser or platform specific. You can use a PC and Mac, Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft, Microsoft Edge, Opera, you name it. Everything that I’m showing you today, you can do from your portable device, your iPhone, Android, iPad, tablet – you name it. If you are out and about on campus or off campus for professional development and you get an RTI question, the answers are always with you.

Carly Smith:

Hey, I’m only seeing RTI applications on your screen, but what if I’m also overseeing LPAC, 504 or RTI for my campus?

Jason Stewart:

Carly, you’re pretty observant. The role that I’m logged into today is streamlined for this RTI presentation, but in reality, it can be set up however your district needs. We work with our districts to configure access based on individual needs. Hey, that’s kind of like RTI itself, right?

We can set roles to see as many or as few applications as needed. So, if you need to see LPAC and RTI, we can do that. Not only that, we can work with you to make it where certain roles only see certain screens. For example, if you have an interventionist that only does tier 2 we can make it where he or she only sees tier 2 when they log in. We can even take it a step further and make a certain field on a screen read-only.

Carly Smith:

Now, Jason, when I’m traveling around the state visiting districts, they seem to have a hard time telling me how many students they have in each tier across the district, and within each campus. Have you experienced that as well?

Jason Stewart:

Absolutely. I see this all the time.

Carly Smith:

Is there an easy way to find this information within Frontline RTI?

Jason Stewart:

Unless you’re using an electronic system like ours, there is no easy way to glean this information, unless you’re manually keeping spreadsheets, and who has time for that, right? So take a look when I go into one of our tiers.

The very first screen that you see is our student-search screen. I can easily filter by a tier to see how many students I have across the district and then narrow it down to a campus. So, for example, let’s say I want to see how many tier 2 students – I have only 10 across the entire district.

Also, notice the extra data that I’ve brought into this view. I can easily see the (student’s) grade, start looking for other trends, like how old the students, compared to their peers, whether they’re ESL or bilingual. And, in this example, I’ve even brought in the home phone – think of how beneficial that would be for teachers getting ready to make a series of calls home. We integrate with student information systems, so the contact information is always up-to-date.

Carly Smith:

Oh, that screen is really helpful.

Now, you know, I’m a data diva, and many educators need to be able to extrapolate information to present at different meetings. Are there reports that can be scheduled and emailed from the system?

Jason Stewart:

Yes, we have an entire section of admin reports. You can run them as needed or schedule them to run and send an email out on a regular basis. Here are a couple of quick examples for you.

The first one that we’re looking at is just a summary of RTI tiers 2 and 3. You can see at the top I have the student’s name and a bold line with basic demographics. Below that, I have the actual intervention plan and some more details and then it starts the next student with another bold line and basic demographics. That’s one example. We also have an RTI short summary, that’s just a listing of the student and the tier that they’re currently in, along with the historical tier entry date. There’s another example that’s the RTI summary by grade. I can tell at a quick glance that I have one student in second grade, one student in third grade and three students in fourth grade. We even have a custom report builder, so just in case you want something we haven’t already thought of, you can build it. If we have time, I’ll show you an example of one of those a little bit later.

Carly Smith:

I’d like that. Now, I’ve found that districts, no matter the size, have a wide variety of RTI processes. Does Frontline force everyone to do things a certain way? Will districts need to change their process to use Frontline RTI?

Jason Stewart:

Carly, our system is really just a framework for tracking your RTI process, whatever that process may be, and it is designed in a way that can grow and mature with you as your RTI process matures. Let me show you an example. I’m going to go into a student from my list. And actually let me show you one thing before I go into the student’s record. Notice, when I hover over a student’s name, it gives me a basic demographic pop up. Sometimes you just need a little snippet of information. I can tell at a quick glance that my student is nine years old. I can see what grade he’s in, his home language, and even his home phone number without ever accessing the student record. Once I do click on the student’s name to go into the record, please notice the FERPA screen. We take confidentiality very seriously, obviously because of the type of data that we’re talking about. The system tracks everyone that accesses a student record, all the way down to individual changes that are made within the system. Let’s look at an actual intervention plan.

Notice how, on the screen, you’re seeing three separate line items. You can have as many individual plans tracked as needed. This kiddo happens to have three. I’m going to open one up for you. We’ve streamlined the data entry for you as much as possible. You have basic tracking information at the top, a place to note the targeted area of concern along with a place to elaborate in more detail about what the student needs.

Below you can actually track detailed information about the plan. You can click on search for interventions and it will bring up a menu of interventions that are available within your district, or you can just type it directly in the box, if you’re doing something unusual to meet the students’ needs.

There’s a place to put a specific goal statement, current performance level, desired performance level, when you plan to start and for how long, where the intervention is going to be physically provided, and also how you plan to progress monitor on the student, so how frequently you’re going to progress report.

Carly Smith:

Now, Jason, you and I both know all this data collection is useless if we don’t do anything with it. Teachers want to track what they’re doing in the classroom and monitor student progress. More importantly, they want to see if the intervention is working for their students. How does this solution fit with progress monitoring?

Jason Stewart:

In our tier 2 follow-up application, Carly, and this is actually the same in tier 3, we have built in progress monitoring. This allows for data collection on each specific intervention. Not only can I put in individual data points, but I can chart it to see if my student is on track. Notice the aim line, trendline and individual data elements. And this chart is only one part of our progress monitoring. We also have a more narrative progress report that’s available as well.

Carly Smith:

As you know, Jason, legislation can change quicker than the Texas weather. What about parent notification? SB1153 from the 85th Texas Legislature now requires parent notification letters. Do you have those available?

Jason Stewart:

We do. We actually have several reports that you can choose from, depending on how much detail you want to send home, and we have them in multiple foreign languages. So, the example that I’m showing my screen now, it’s just an English PDF. It’s the required notification letter with all of the components that you need to stay in compliance. And then, as I scroll down, the second component is your student handbook statement. So, who do the parents contact if they want to make a special education referral or if they want to make a Section 504 referral?

This example is the same exact series of letters, but in Arabic. We also have these available in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Farsi and several other languages.

You know what, Carly, not only is Senate Bill 1153 a hot topic, so is the Texas Strategic Action Plan for Special Education. I mentioned our custom report builder earlier. Check out this custom data extract that I built, that pulls in satellite data fields for me. This one has original tier start dates, so I can look at longitudinal information. I also pulled in the RTI PEIMS intervention indicator. This is just one example. Notice the date that I bolded here. This kid started RTI back in 2014 and we’re still doing RTI. Perhaps something isn’t working and we should consider moving on a special education referral.

We do have the capability of communicating bi-directionally with many student information systems.

Carly Smith:

That’s very helpful. Now what about keeping parents and all the involve teachers informed throughout the process? I found that getting documents returned and gathering signatures can be very difficult and very time consuming.

Jason Stewart:

We have a Parent/Peer Portal in our Archive Manager. Our Case Manager is the digital filing cabinet for each student with unlimited digital storage. It allows for uploading of external documents for storing and for documents to be shared directly through the system. It also lets you track the history of views and the requests for signatures. There’s a verification.

Let’s take a quick look at Archive Manager. Look at the file structure organization on the left-hand side. Districts can set up their own folders, labels and document tags. When I open one of these up, you see all the little green icons? When I click on one of those, it gives me the history of anything shared through the parent/peer portal. I can see when the document was shared, when it was viewed and I can even request parents to sign acknowledgement that they have received the document. If a document is ever unshared, it still maintains the history with the system.

Something somewhat related to this is our transfer-record feature. If a student transfers from a district using Frontline RTI to another district using Frontline RTI – think about that math that Heather showed with all of the districts that are using Frontline – you have the capability of transferring the entire student record between districts. Not only will you get all of the documents in the Archive, you will get the data on the screens, too. Think about how much of a time-saver that can be.

Carly Smith:

Now Jason, just to clarify, if a district is using Frontline’s beyond RTI, like for ARD or LPAC, would they have to go into each system to see the student records?

Jason Stewart:

No, you don’t. You can access it all from here, in Archive Manager. Think of it as one, big filing drawer for a student. In that drawer, I can see the most recent ARD, the most recent LPAC and even external documents that are uploaded. It’s like a great big digital cumulative folder of special population data. And that’s the beauty of using Frontline for all of your special programs.

Carly Smith:

That’s a good point, Jason. We find that many districts struggle with inconsistencies throughout their districts when using multiple systems. Having everything on one platform makes your life so much easier, especially when our RTI (information) flows directly into ARD. If they are referred for special education services, things are less likely to fall through the cracks. It improves inter-district collaboration and supports serving the whole child. Well, Jason, you shared a lot of good information in a short amount of time. Is there anything else we didn’t talk about that you would like to share?

Jason Stewart:

Carly, I could actually talk about this stuff all day, but I know we are limited on time. There is one other huge benefit that I think is worthy of mentioning before we’re done. Let me show you our STAAR screen.

When you use the Frontline applications across all student populations, it helps make the decision-making process easier. Take a look. This is our standard STAAR screen. When I scrolled to the bottom, I can open to see if any other committees like LPAC, 504 or the ARD committee have already made decisions that we need to take into consideration for our meeting. But down at the bottom (of the screen), you can see ARD information, Section 504 information. If this student were a second-language learner and there were LPAC decisions that were made, for state testing, they would show here. And before you ask, Carly, yes, we can’t integrate with TestHound. If a district doesn’t use TestHound, we have exports of the testing data that can be pulled as well.

Carly Smith:

This looks really good, but I’m curious, what if the district currently uses another product or nothing at all. Switching from a provider can be scary, and we know change is hard, even a positive change. So what kind of training and support does Frontline offer?

Jason Stewart:

Carly, we’re not just here to sell you a solution. We want to ensure you’re successful in using those solutions. So in addition to our excellent onsite training, we have comprehensive training guides, recurring webinars and excellent customer support.

Carly Smith:

Jason, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing information about Frontline’s RTI solution, and answering all of my questions. Speaking of questions, just to reminder that if you send questions or contact requests via chat, we’ll be falling up on those after the webinar. We’ll be sure to share our contact information again as well, if you prefer to reach out to us directly. Now to wrap up, I’m going to hand it over to Patisu Plott.

Patisu Plott:

Thanks, again, Jason and Carly. Lots of great information shared today. So, today, you briefly evaluated what you currently use in your district for RTI, what’s working and what’s not working and more importantly, how your current RTI process helps with monitoring your students’ progress. Then we demonstrated how Frontline’s RTI solution would benefit your district by suppoRTIng compliance, progress monitoring, simplifying the overwhelming RTI process and streamlining your district processes. Now, let’s take a moment to reflect on how Frontline RTI might look in your district. How could our solution help? What problems might it solve? And how does it compare to your current process in place today?

Consider the power in streamlining programs within your district to serve the whole child. Consolidating all special programs under Frontline not only standardizes district processes but will also increase efficiencies and staff productivity, program fidelity and potentially even save your district money. As you think through the previous post questions and consider consolidating all special programs under Frontline, you may have additional questions and we are here to help. On your screen, you’ll see the three education solution executives for Texas: Carly Smith, who lives in San Antonio and covers Regions 13 through 19, Heather Evans who lives in Dallas and covers Regions 7 through 12, and myself, Patisu Plott out of Houston, covering Regions 1, 3, 6, and Region 20.

And remember, since we have close to 200 individuals joining us today, you’ll be hearing from us directly if you sent in a contact request or question via our Q and A section.

With educators at the helm, Frontline Education builds our solutions for the unique needs of school districts based on a foundation of best practice. From our work with over 12,000 educational organizations we’ve gained and unparalleled depth of experience about effective implementation. And we are ready to support you. We are honored to serve over 800 districts here in Texas and look forward to suppoRTIng many, many more in the years to come. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to learn more about our RTI solution.