Across my career supporting outcomes for learners from large-scale systems change down to individual students consultation meetings, I've never met a parent, teacher, interventionist, or administrator who did not want the child or teenager to experience growth and improvement in the area(s) of need.
However, I have experienced the tension and difficulty in meetings where everyone sitting around the table is at the end of their ropes because growth is not happening or there is a regression in the student's academic, behavior, and/or mental health capacity.
In these meetings my role is helping everyone focus their efforts to turn the ship in the right direction together rather than crashing into each other. Thankfully you have all the skills necessary to help drive this student-focus process toward success and away from failure too.
Step 1: Ensure everyone is on the same page about the issue(s) needing support
The student growth process always begins with clearly defined, understood, and operationally defined areas of concern. Every person around the table needs to be able to accurately discuss what has happened and is happening that is of concern. This requires a concensus on specific definitions and not general ideas including being able to describe the frequency, duration, level, intensity, etc. of the issue(s) at hand. If there is not agreement on the problem, how it is defined, and what it looks like, there will never be an effective agreement on what to do about it.
Step 2: Evaluate the 3 components of student growth
Now that we have ensured everyone is on the same page about the problem(s) to be solved, we evaluate these 3 components to identify why growth is not happening.
Area 1: Effective Intervention
When the areas of concern are clearly defined, this information provides direction for the selection of interventions to implement. It is possible that growth is not happening because the interventions that are being used are not effective for the specific student need or not effective at all.
It is important to ensure that intervention selection is guided by the data and supporting evidence so that the likelihood of success is in the student's favor. The research literature is filled with evidence-based practices that give direction about how to intervene in the areas of academic, behavior, and mental-health student needs. As a team, these interventions that have support in being effective need to be discussed.
Thought to consider: Is the lack of progress due to the selected intervention not being effective for meeting the targeted student need(s)?
Initial questions to ask:
What interventions were previously tried with limited to no success?
What are the specific interventions being used to meet the student's needs?
What evidence exists to support the selection of these interventions?
From what resources were these interventions found?
Area 2: Implementation Fidelity
Implementation fidelity is a term that describes how accurately the intervention is being implemented as intended. A simple example is if an intervention has 10 steps (that are clearly defined), when a teacher implements 9 out of 10 steps correctly then he/she implemented the intervention with 90% accuracy.
With the complexity of today's classroom and the number of responsibilities teachers have to carry, it is difficult to implement something 100% accurately every time. For a research article to be published, the intervention needs to be implemented with at least 80 - 90% accuracy. As classroom teachers, that is also an acceptable range to be in too.
Thought to consider: When faced with the statement "We've already tried that and it didn't work", determine to what degee of accuracy was this intervention implemented.
Initial questions to ask:
Do we all agree on the intervention steps and descriptions of those steps?
To what degree of accuracy are the interventions being implemented?
How does the accuracy of implementation vary across all adults working with the student?
If the intervention is not being implemented with enough accuracy, do we need to do more training?
If the intervention is not being implemented with enough accuracy, do we need to switch to an easier to implement intervention?
Area 3: Measured Outcomes
Academic, behavior, and mental-health improvement is difficult to determine by a general "eye ball" test or gut feeling. There needs to be specific, measurable outcomes that are sensitive enough to detect when change is occurring in either direction.
When these measured outcomes aren't in place then: a) effective interventions are deemed ineffective and stopped, or b) ineffective interventions are assumed effective and continued.
The determination of what outcome measures to use is best done in the beginning of the intervention process and used to identify the descriptive factors of the student needs.
Thought to consider: Are there prior interventions we have tried and assumed didn't work, and may have been working but we didn't have meaningful outcome measures at the time?
Initial questions to ask:
What are the current outcome measures we use to identify student progress?
Are our current outcome measurements giving us the necessary information to determine if the intervention is working or not?
Who is collecting these data and are they doing so accurately?
How often are these data being collected and does that accurately represent the big picture of student progress?
Do all of the team members understand what these data are telling us about the student's progress and intervention's effectiveness?
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