When looking at your social-emotional behavioral skills program implementation plan at-large, do you have a plan for social-emotional progress monitoring? Monitoring tools play an important role in understanding how students apply the skills a curriculum teaches them.
The insights from progress monitoring provide valuable information to educators and district leaders. Educators can understand what parts of instruction work from the individual student and classroom levels. Grade level and district-wide, district leaders can understand trends in instruction, skill gaps, and ways to promote curriculum training to strengthen implementation of curricula.
Progress monitoring involves the consistent collection and use of data to assess students' performance and quantifying students' rate of improvement to instruction. Social-emotional progress monitoring gives educators the data to tailor interventions proactively during the school year. Adjustments early on maximize students’ rate of success.
A common progress monitoring structure includes:
Applying this type of framework allows for enough time for educators to work with their students toward the desired skill acquisition. Educators and students need time for program instruction, practice for skill development, and the opportunity to observe new and emerging skills on display.
Capturing and analyzing data throughout the year helps district leaders determine if and how students make sufficient progress in their skill development. It also provides insight into how to make changes to the program. For instance, the data might show that students would benefit from more intensive, individualized support beyond the whole classroom activities. The data may also show that other students have similar skill gaps and would benefit from a break-out Tier 2 intervention small group.
With administration of social-emotional progress monitoring throughout the year, educators receive real-time insight into students’ progress toward specific goals. The DESSA-mini universal screeners measure critical skills linked to student success in less than one minute per student. Since the DESSA is sensitive to fluctuations in students’ social and emotional skills, it serves as a reliable tool for adapting program curriculum instruction to data trends.
With DESSA, you can also compare individual students’ scores over time to determine their overall social and emotional competence. The reporting features within the system allow educators and district leaders to analyze students’ past and current skill scores. This information will help educators understand the significance between the baseline and subsequent assessments to learn what is working and what is not. Providing feedback on the progress that the child is making on acquiring social-emotional competencies because of Tier 1 universal instruction and Tier 2 targeted support gives students the best chance at reaching desired outcomes.
Understanding the strengths and weakness of curricula throughout the implementation journey ensures continuous program quality improvement. The curricula the district uses exists to teach students skills they need to reach determined goals. Without consistent, data-driven progress monitoring, it can be hard to understand how or if a curriculum makes an impact on students’ ability to learn and apply their knowledge. Selecting a measurement tool like the DESSA-mini gives district teams data to understand and evaluate the outcomes of using a particular curriculum.
Progress monitoring allows for more confident decision-making on a district’s strategy to providing support. Progress monitoring also serves as a consistent feedback loop to understanding how to support students in their growth. When measuring the presence of skills and behaviors, they may fluctuate in time across different competency areas due to a variety of factors including changes in students' environments, changes in instruction, or other internalizing or externalizing factors. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching students social-emotional skills. Progress monitoring ensures that students get the type of help they need when they need it and that educators can make changes to instruction based on timely, available data.
Incorporate social-emotional progress monitoring for a thorough program implementation. Integrating these check-in opportunities to see how student progress boosts students' ability to reach outcomes by tailoring interventions to support their needs quicker than waiting for a once, annual assessment of their skills. Already on your implementation journey and ready to measure your program’s impact on students? Read our white paper on the importance and practicality of screening here.