The vendor is required to provide an existing digital program(s) which can be provided to local school districts and charter schools across the state, and which can perform the following:
• Integrate data from an agency student information system at the student level regarding discipline, school safety violations, attendance, behavior, course failures, and academic performance into a user-appropriate interface and display.
• The digital program should provide one integrated school improvement and intervention solution.
• Provide indicators that a student is in need of early intervention, in order to increase academic performance and decrease behavioral concerns of the student.
• Provide ways for the data to be displayed for use by teachers, school administrators, and parents, in order to easily view and interpret the data at the student level.
• Empower educators to create, assign, and monitor the progress of tiered interventions and supports, and align the interventions with other key performance indicators to support all students’ progress toward on-track graduation.
• Incorporate dashboard views to provide unique insights around student achievement.
• Within the platform, depending upon permission levels, educators should be able to aggregate and disaggregate data at the state, agency, school, and student levels, as well as filter data by student demographics determined by board and agency.
• Suggest evidence-based interventions that can be utilized to increase a student’s academic performance and reduce behavioral concerns.
• Include the ability to document and measure the success of tiered supports and strategies used by education staff to improve academic performance and decrease behavioral concerns.
• This includes the ability for agency to document and measure changes over time of the specific skills and protective factors of a student, which may assist with increasing the student’s academic performance and adaptive behaviors.
• Have the ability to compare and aggregate the performance data of students, for each teacher, based on a student's sex, special needs, english proficiency, economic status, migrant status, ethnicity, response to tiered intervention, response to tiered intervention enrollment date, absence rate, feeder school, type of school, course failures, and other criteria that may be determined by board.
• Provide a way to load and display student level data from local, national, or other standard assessments within a reasonable timeframe of the data being provided.
• Display data from aggregate student reports at the agency level, based on the student’s grade, school, and ethnicity.
• Be able to provide advanced analytical capabilities, which may include applying ai/ml or other developing methodologies within a walled garden environment.
- Data integration:
• Ability to integrate data at the student level into one dashboard display regarding the following items: academic performance, discipline, school safety violations, attendance, behavior, course failures, and other criteria as determined by agency
• Ability to integrate nightly with the agency student information system (sis), including but not limited to aspire, skyward, infinite campus, PowerSchool and other critical data systems, such as educator’s handbook.
• Ability to structure the data into time periods defined by the agency and/or schools (such as terms or semesters).
• Ability to visualize assessment data at the overall achievement and sub score level.
• Ability to collect and integrate school climate and social-emotional data, if the agency chooses to do so and parental approval is granted.
• In addition, if the agency chooses to collect social-emotional data, the system will include a process to assist the agency in collecting parental permission.
• Ability to provide an expert client success team that works closely with the agency data team to create an efficient and customized data plan for seamless integration in a timely manner.
• The vendor will be able to demonstrate that they have the capacity and experience to implement a statewide early warning system and support the implementation with an ongoing client success team that is available for all agency that are integrated into the system.
- Survey content and design:
• If the digital program provides the option for conducting student surveys, have demonstrated methods of tracking students whose parents have granted consent, in order to be in compliance with state code 53e-9-203.
• Ability to provide research-based, valid, and reliable survey instruments for students and teachers to measure specific skills (such as social emotional skills) and protective factors of a student, which may assist with increasing the student’s academic performance and adaptive behaviors.
• The vendor must be able to articulate how those instruments have been normed and validated
• Ability to customize surveys to match the needs of the agency while retaining validity and reliability.
• Ability to translate and validate surveys in multiple languages determined by board, to ensure an inclusive and accessible program.
• The digital program will include a user-appropriate interface for use by teachers, school administrators, and parents.
• Ability for a user to view the data on a single computer screen.
- Data analysis and reporting:
• Ability for state educators and leaders to view student survey results alongside attendance, behavior, and academic data.
• Ability for education staff to easily share individual student survey results alongside attendance, behavior, and academic data with the parent and guardians.
• Ability to analyze data at the state, agency, school, and student levels.
• Ability to analyze data by meaningful groups including demographics, free and reduced lunch, english learner, students with disabilities, attendance, and academics.
• Ability for the agency to group students by demographic information to understand trends and patterns, including trends and patterns with real-time data and data over time.
• Ability to compare performance of students, for each teacher, based on the categories defined in state code 53f-4-207, such as: sex, special need, english proficiency, economic status, migrant status, ethnicity, responses to tiered intervention, responses to tiered intervention enrollment date, absence rate, feeder school, type of school, course failures, and other criteria as determined by the state board. • Ability to configure secure permissions based on an individual’s role within the agency to ensure that each authorized user can access their data and only the data to which they are authorized.
• Role-based access should be based on intuitive built-in presets defined by board, supplemented by the ability for an administrator to create custom roles with granular permissions.
• Role-based permissions should, at minimum, include classroom teachers, administrators, school counselors, and parents.
• Ability to suggest recommended, evidence-informed actions and practices around building skills, such as academic and social-emotional skills.
• Teachers and leaders should be able to use the actions and practices in their classrooms, schools, and online.
- Interventions and progress monitoring:
• Ability to recommend evidence-based or evidence-informed interventions to improve academic performance or student behavior.
• Evidence-based interventions are practices or programs that have evidence to show that they are effective at producing results and improving outcomes when implemented to fidelity.
• The vendor will demonstrate that the early warning system recommends interventions that have a tier 2 Level of moderate evidence as defined by every student succeeds act (ESSA) tiers of evidence
• Ability to create intervention plans for individual students or groups of students.
• Ability to assign educators to be responsible for implementation of intervention plans.
• Ability to create fidelity checks to monitor successful implementation of interventions.
• Ability to view progress monitoring data for each intervention, which includes an aim line for the trajectory of how each student should be progressing to meet the stated goal.
• Ability to view an aggregation summary of intervention status across an entire school/ agency /state to determine intervention effectiveness.
• Ability to create a customized intervention library for state educators utilizing the latest editions of the state least restrictive behavioral intervention manual (LRBI) and evidence-based intervention companion guide (EBI), as well as other evidence based or evidence informed practices, to find intervention strategies that best support students.
• Ability to generate parent communication to alert the parent of plans or interventions.
• Automatically flag a student profile when early warning thresholds determined by board are met so that a teacher can easily identify a student who may be in need of intervention.
• It is minimally required that the flags or alerts be configured based on the student academic results, which may include a student's performance on the previous year's standards assessment.
• The vendor will work with board to define the early warning thresholds
• Ability for education staff to record notes or documentation regarding specific students regarding interventions utilized with the student and the effectiveness of those interventions.
• This includes the ability to upload documents or student-based plans.
• Ability to set a reminder or schedule 'follow-up' to a plan or interventions.
• Incorporate a variety of algorithms to support student learning outcomes and provide data regarding student improvement and growth reported by teachers.
• Integrate response to intervention tiers and activities as filters for the reporting of individual student data and aggregated data, including by demographics, school, or teacher.
- Implementation and administration:
• In collaboration with board, notification to agency of the availability of the digital platform and the benefits of using the digital platform.
• Regular reports to board regarding which agency are utilizing the digital platform or which agency are in various stages of implementation of the platform.
• Access to a responsive customer service team with demonstrated experience supporting other state education agencies in successfully implementing and administering similar projects.
• Access to needed support for agency to ensure that the agency student information system (sis) is appropriately interfacing with the digital platform.
• Training for designated agency staff, as needed and requested, on how to interpret and utilize the data provided through the platform.
• Support for designated agency or board staff, as needed and requested, for troubleshooting issues with the platform
• Additional support, technical assistance, and information on best practices for agency as they implement the digital platform into their work.
• Defined methods for regularly gathering feedback from agency in order to improve the digital platform or improve support provided to agency for the digital platform.
• Opportunities for agency to meet with the vendor at least once a year to analyze data, discuss barriers, review key features of the early warning system, and gather feedback to improve the tool.
- Reporting requirements:
• In collaboration with board and agency staff, create the functionality to produce an annual impact and progress report for the board and stakeholders that showcases the effectiveness of the early warning system for students, using aggregate de-identified data.
• The annual impact and progress report will highlight insights gained into student patterns and trends, and the impact of progress monitoring on student success.
- The maximum contract budget is $2,100,000.00 for five (5) years.
- Contract Period/Term: 1 year