This video covers navigating and using the EWIS Monitoring Resources on the websites
of the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Educators can use these resources to identify students at risk of missing academic milestones
during the school year, track practice and programming adjustments, and reflect on progress
using the Early Warning Implementation Cycle.
In this video, we’ll cover setting up a system to monitor students’ ongoing academic
risk.
Schools collect student data on a regular basis, and with limited time, it may be difficult
to cut through the volume of information.
With early warning monitoring, educators can identify which students are showing signs
of academic risk throughout the school year and decide how best to support students.
To get started, first, choose how to flag students.
This starts with indicators and thresholds.
Across all grades, the best indicators are ones that are easily obtained, are actionable,
and are able to change during the school year in response to students’ progress.
Research shows that ABC's — attendance, behavior & course performance — are powerful
indicators of students' academic risk.
If that feels like a lot, start small with just attendance.
Thresholds or cut points are the scores at which students begin to show signs of
academic risk, use a threshold for each indicator.
We monitor the ABCs – 10% for attendance, for behavior now we monitor the out of school
suspensions, and the curriculum progress with the grades.
Another option is to add indicators and thresholds that fit your local context: tardies, postsecondary
readiness activities, or others.
Up to four indicators may be enough.
We have an attendance policy.
Separate from that, we were interested in actually the number of past absences.
The last two 9th grade cohorts we found that 71% of students who had 13 or more absences
in a class earned a D+ or lower in that class.
So that’s about less than 4 absences per quarter.
Communicating that to students and to teachers – we’re hopeful that knowledge will be
powerful.
Starting the conversation there we’re hopeful will lead to more structured interventions.
Decide which tool to use: within a student information system, on a separate system such
as dashboard software, or in a spreadsheet.
Around the state, educators use a range of tools based on their context.
Keep in mind, you may want to share it, and will want to update it several times throughout
the school year.
I have an excel spreadsheet that is homegrown that we refine quarterly.
By the end of each term I flag who right now – if the term ended – term 1, term 2,
term 3 – who would not meet that academic milestone – and that’s where we focus
our interventions with the teachers.
What we did was pull together the high school graduation high and moderate risk students
– and the postsecondary enrollment high and moderate risk students.
We put those together in a spreadsheet in google docs and then we tracked two data points
at December 1st and April 1st.
We tracked the status of their postsecondary plans and we tracked if they were on track
for graduation.
I created drop-downs in a google spreadsheet so all the counselors had to do was pick from
a drop down for their students.
They had a lot of work to do with the students – but they didn’t have a lot of work so
we could track it.
The Department offers a free EWIS Monitoring Tool on the EWIS Monitoring website.
We’ve created a new monitoring web page.
On that we have a couple of new exciting things.
One of them is this monitoring tool.
This is us trying to provide a free resource that might help you do some of these monitoring
activities throughout the year.
This monitoring tool is going to be a bit of an iterative process for us.
As we hear about any potential problems and we hear of new ideas of how you want to use
it we’ll be trying to make those improvements.
At each marking period, or whatever frequency is right for your context, generate up-to-date
information.
Examine the data two, three or four times a year to identify students if they begin
to go off track.
Catching changes in student risk right away, understanding underlying causes and creating
appropriate programmatic supports or systemic changes can bring students back on track quickly.
Identify students whose needs are not being met, and explore underlying causes of risk.
Based on the findings, take action with Tier 1, Tier 2 or Tier 3 supports.
Assign students to programs or interventions based on their strengths and needs, and consider
system-wide changes.
Seeing some of the risk factors whether it was attendance, poor grade performance, maybe
poor test performance – some of the things we did – that I did specifically with my
kids – as incoming freshman were to meet with them weekly to check their grades in
our school grading system.
Have them stay for extra help, peer tutoring, we also have an after school help program
where students can get – for two hours afterschool four days a week – we have a late bus that
comes in and they can get help with their academics, with their homework so they don’t
have as much homework to bring home with them – they can get targeted help specifically
from a math teacher, an English teacher.
We’ve even had situations where we’ve had to make home visits.
It’s been a challenge but it’s certainly something that we embrace and that we will
certainly use this moving forward to help our incoming freshmen to succeed as they transition
into high school.
EWIS is what we call a predictive analytic.
It is not a life sentence for kids – not meant to track them.
It’s meant for us to really design interventions based on all the information we have – from
EWIS, from your other data and information that you have in your school district, and
what you know about your kids.
EWIS is just one piece of this.
So we have a lot of change in practice in curriculum and instruction that has resulted
from what started as a simple spreadsheet with filters for who’s not reaching our
targeted milestones and what can we do to be proactive and support students.
Monitoring strategies and tools can be simple or complex.
The best methods are any that are used to impact students.
Making it as accessible and easy as possible for those who don’t naturally come to data
really helps when they can see, this is what it leads to for kids.
See other videos in this series to learn more about DESE’s EWIS Monitoring resources.