Do your reports support the RTI model and provide teachers with recommendations based on different tiers?
The easyCBM system, in particular the District version (which is managed through Riverside Insights, was developed to support districts implementing RTI. Although some very small districts make use of the Deluxe Teacher Edition for their RTI work, the District version, with its ability to track student data over time, different levels of access (for access to data at the District, Building, and Classroom level), and centralized process for updating both student and staff rosters, might be more useful for you.
Both District and Teacher Deluxe versions of the easyCBM system include a number of reports to support RTI implementation.
Benchmark Reports help identify students in need of tiered instruction, providing color-coded risk ratings (“High Risk, Some Risk, Low Risk”) based on district-set cut scores (the specific cut score selected depends on local context and criteria adopted in your district for the proportion of students who will be served in different tiers). The risk ratings do not explicitly identify a specific tier, because different districts have different policies about the criteria for different tiers of instruction, but they facilitate grouping students for additional instructional support as well as assist teachers and student study teams in identifying the specific skill areas where students might benefit from additional supports.
Group Reports provide an easy way to identify how similar the instructional needs are of students in a given group. Teachers control the grouping feature, and students can exist simultaneously in multiple groups. For instance, a student might be in the teacher’s Whole Class group as well as in a Tier 2 Reading Fluency group and a Tier 3 Math Facts group. The Groups Report is also how you access what we call an “Item Analysis”, which helps teachers figure out which items, in particular, their students are struggling with — and which students have mastered / still need more help with the different items. For instance, the Item Analysis for the Proficient Reading comprehension tests might help a teacher identify the students who are doing well with Literal Comprehension questions but still struggling with Inferential or Evaluative Comprehension — or the students who struggle with all three types of Comprehension (this information is quite useful when brainstorming how best to support the grown in reading comprehension).
Individual Reports track individual students’ progress (on both Benchmark and Progress Monitoring measures) over time using a time-series graph against the backdrop of national normative lines (at the District’s selected percentile ranks associated with the established cut scores for risk ratings) and — provided the teacher has input the Intervention information — also plot Intervention Lines on the graphs to help staff better understand the link between the interventions being provided and student progress — or lack thereof.
Together, these different reports are designed to facilitate interpretation of student assessment data / student learning and prompt wise decision-making about what interventions / instructional strategies to try with particular students.
As District teachers, administrators, and support staff become more familiar with interpreting the data, they begin to gather insights into the interventions and intensity of interventions that demonstrate success at meeting their students’ needs, and this, in turn, helps provide school- and district-wide fodder for staff development based on real-time consideration of the impact of local practice.
In districts where adoption has been widespread and has included a focus on ensuring that staff have a clear understanding of the different reports available and how to make the most out of the information they are gathering, the improvements in student learning (and staff enthusiasm based on being able to see clear evidence of their personal impact on student learning) have been pretty remarkable.