Iowa: Creating and Editing a Progress Monitoring Plan

Important note for Iowa users (K-6): You must continue to set up interventions in Iowa’s Student Success data system because it’s used for state reporting. Only scores (PM and screening) will transfer from FastBridge to Student Success, not interventions. Setting up interventions in FastBridge is optional. 

Jump to:

• Create a New PM Plan
• Update any 0 start scores (Fall PM setup)
• Setting Up Off-Level PM
  • Read THIS article first
  • Then follow THESE instructions
• Edit an Existing PM Plan

Create a New Progress Monitoring Plan

Note: If you are re-creating a PM plan that was previously released or prematurely end dated, we suggest setting the start date as the current week and selecting the next consecutive start form number to pick up where the previous PM plan left off. It's a drop down field titled Starting Form on the Monitoring Schedule setup page. This will allow the new plan to continue where the previous ended and the previous data to smoothly integrate on the PM Report.

To add interventions click New in the upper right corner of the PM page. 

A menu opens to selection PM/intervention area.

1. Click Add in the students section of the form

• In the Add Students view, you may begin typing a student name into the search bar or scroll through the list. Click on the student's name to add them to the plan.

  

• As students are selected, they appear below in the Selected Students section along with the last four digits of the student's state ID and the grade level. Select the X next to a student's name to remove them from the list.
• Click Confirm to continue after all students have been chosen. To edit, click the edit link in the Selected Students section.
  

2. Use the Progress Monitoring Setup section to determine details for the Progress Monitoring plan.

• Start by selecting the Monitoring Assessment.
• Next, select the Monitoring User from the dropdown menu.
• Select a Starting Form Number. Users might select a different form number if they're adding a new student to the group later in the year, and they want them to be on the same form number as the rest of the students in the group.
• Select the Goal Line to display on the graph. See: the Setting Quality Goals section of Is the Intervention Working: Setting Quality Goals...

3. Use the Timing section to select the Progress Monitoring Start Date and End Date as well as the Frequency in which the data is collected within the timeframe.

• Iowa recommends setting the end date for the end of the school year. If you are considering using incremental PM plans, please see Iowa: Is the Intervention Working? Setting Quality Goals and Using PM Data for Decision-Making. Best practice is setting up PM to the end of the year and then releasing the student from PM, if a change needed.

4. The Goal information is populated automatically but can, and in some cases should, be updated.

• The Start Score generally defaults to match the Screening Score. If there is no Screening Score, the default Start Score will be zero.
• The Weekly Gain is how much growth is required each week in order to meet the goal. The Goal may be considered synonymous with the target score necessary to end progress monitoring.
• For off-level progress monitoring, click the current level displayed and select the desired level. Read first: Iowa: Off-Level Progress Monitoring

5. Intervention information be optionally added or simply click Save at the bottom of the form to skip.

• For Iowa users, entering intervention information into FastBridge will likely result in creating additional work for yourselves as the intervention data does not transfer to Iowa's Student Success system, which is where interventions are entered for state reporting related to Iowa ELI and Healthy Indicators.
• Providing Intervention Details will result in the details appearing on the Progress Monitoring Report in FastBridge but is not transferred to Student Success for state reporting. 
• If you elect to enter intervention information in FastBridge, select a strategy, or the name of the intervention, that will be used.
• Select a Display Name for the strategy or intervention. This name will appear on the Progress Monitoring Report, both on the graph in the form of a phase line.
• Determine the Start Date and End Date.
• Choose Frequency and Duration for the intervention being implemented.

6. Select Save in the lower right corner of the form to save data entered.

A Success message appears after selecting Save. Select OKAY to return to the Progress Monitoring page. 

Update Any Zero Start Scores After Setup (generally in the Fall)

The start score defaults to zero if the progress monitoring was started prior to screening or if the student was screened with an assessment that didn’t include the measure being set up for progress monitoring. These zero start scores will need to be updated manually to use either the first PM score or the most recent screening score (when collected) as the start score.

If the start score defaulted to zero in a progress monitoring plan, here's how to change it:

Select the checkbox next to the student's name and click Edit Setup on the blue action menu at the top

Under Student Goals, look for the Start Score column and click the 0 start score. Enter the first PM score or the screening score (when completed)

Click Save.

Editing Progress Monitoring Setup

IMPORTANT ALERT! Not all editing functions are working. See the Iowa Known Issues with PM Interface article

There isn’t an interface to edit the PM/intervention details for multiple students at once (even if their PM was set up together). Instead you edit the details for each individual student. This allows greater flexibility to serve the needs of the individual students.

In the visual below, you can see how to edit by clicking the checkbox to the left of the student’s name and selecting Edit Setup on the blue action bar. Then select the area of the plan you want to edit and save when you’re finished.

Some things can't be edited after PM data has been collected in the group such as PM Assessment and the Assessment Level.

For those that elect to do double-entry of interventions (in both FastBridge and Student Success), changes to interventions can be made through the existing PM plan. You simply got to Edit Setup, change the details Add an Intervention and click Save. You'll receive the prompt shown below to determine whether a phase line is needed. If you do not see the prompt, please check your pop-up blockers.

Note about PM scheduling:

• There isn’t an option to remove weeks from individual progress monitoring schedules. You just don't administer the probe for the week. There is no “ding” for this (other than the loss of frequent PM data to decide if the intervention is working)