Frequently Asked Intervention Questions

Do I need to add an intervention plan if the student is progress monitoring only?

No. The progress monitoring graph will display on the student's record in Student Success without an intervention. There was a workaround in the Iowa TIER system that required the application of a ‘no intervention’ intervention but that isn’t needed (or desired) in either FAST or Student Success.

Who can see a student's intervention plan?

In addition to the creator and champion of the plan, anyone listed on the intervention team can view a student's intervention plan on the My Plans page or an intervention plan group on the My Group Plans page. Users must have access to the student (see them on the student's tab) to be on the intervention team.

How do I add or remove items from the intervention strategies list?

Each district selects one Intervention Bank Editor to maintain the library of pre-populated interventions for the district; contact your district’s Intervention Bank Editor for assistance adding or removing strategies. To add an intervention strategy that is unique to an individual student or group of students and not used frequently by others in the district, use the ‘custom’ option.

What tier is it?

”Tier” is sometimes used to indicate the intensity of intervention. In Iowa, you are more likely to see the terms “targeted” and “intensive” intervention in the Intervention System Guide (p. 8). Generally speaking, targeted (tier 2) interventions group together students with similar needs and intensive (tier 3) interventions are based on individual diagnostics to pinpoint the individual issues. Both can be delivered in a small group setting, and note that specially designed instruction (SDI) for special education may exist across the tiers of intervention; it is not its own separate tier.

The progress monitoring measure we use isn't available in the PM method drop down when we create an intervention. How do we add it?

Currently there are six progress progress monitoring measures that are formatted to transfer from FastBridge to Student Success (listed below). Additional measures will available in the future, although there is no current timeline for the completion of that work.

  1. CBMMATH Automaticity PM
  2. CBMR English PM
  3. CBMR Spanish PM
  4. Early Math PM
  5. Early Reading English PM
  6. Early Reading Spanish PM

If you use a measure from the list above but you don't see it in the PM method drop down, it means your district hasn't used that measure before. Once a student (any student) in the district has a score for that assessment, it will populate in this drop-down.

Is it possible to add two progress monitoring measures to a group?

The intervention group only allows one measure, but all PM measures are visible on the student’s record as year-long graphs. Select the measure to associate with the intervention (group or individual) plan based on what you are working on in the intervention.

Can a student have more than one intervention plan or be in more than one intervention plan group?

Yes, there is no limit. In addition, the same progress monitoring measure can be selected on multiple intervention plans, if needed.

What duration should I set for an intervention?

There is no 'standard' length of time for an intervention but a general guide is to set it longer than needed but be sure to review the intervention regularly for effectiveness. In a group intervention plan, you may even want to set it the length of the school year.

Why? The duration of an active intervention plan may be extended by editing the group and selecting a longer duration in the drop-down. However, if it is an intervention plan group, when one or more students has been marked as 'completed' in the intervention plan group, that removes the editing function and you can no longer extend the duration. It's better to set the intervention duration long because you can always mark the students as complete to remove them from the intervention, you can't always edit the intervention to extend it. 

Remember that the intervention is a real plan for a student that is intended to close the gap. Don't "set and forget", but rather, review periodically and change up interventions that aren't working, even if the end date is not near. To that end, setting shorter end dates could help stimulate the review process, if you pay attention to the notifications in the upper right corner of Student Success and review interventions before they are due.

A student is labeled with Progress Due on an Intervention Plan, what does that mean?

Progress Due is a status alert designed to help remind users that progress monitoring has not been completed for the current time period yet. In other words, a PM score has not been received. Since weekly is the most common frequency for PM, if you've set the intervention PM frequency to 'weekly' the system will look for a PM score for the measure/grade set up in that intervention plan for the current week. The system defines a week as a calendar week, not as a 7 day period. Every Monday when you look, the status will say Progress Due until a PM score is received, which happens nightly from systems such as FastBridge.

What if you miss progress monitoring for a week? If you miss PMing a student this week, it will show 'progress due' all week to remind you that it needs to be completed. Then next week, you will still see 'progress due' because that is the start of a NEW week and a PM score hasn't been received for that week yet. If you PM the student Monday, for example, it takes overnight for that score to send from FastBridge to Panorama, so on Tuesday in Student Success you will NOT see the 'Progress Due' status for the rest of the week through Friday because a score is present for that week (again, a week is basically Monday - Friday). Then the following week, on Monday, you will see Progress Due again until a PM score is received for that week.

The intervention plan shows Past Completion, what does it mean and what should I do?

The past completion label means it's past the completion date (plan duration) selected on the plan setup page. Next steps will depend on whether the team decides to continue with that particular intervention.

The team decides the intervention will not continue (changing intervention or goal met): Mark plan as complete (goal met or not met) and create a new intervention plan, if needed.

The intervention is effective and the team decides to continue with no change: Edit the intervention plan to select a longer duration. Note: For an intervention plan group, if any students have been marked complete in the group, the plan is no longer editable. You will need to mark the intervention plan as complete (goal not met) for the remaining students in the group and create the same intervention plan beginning when the previous plan ended.

I completed a student's intervention plan but accidentally marked the wrong option for goal met/not met. Can I go back and change it?

Yes, a team member can edit the outcome information for a closed plan to correct outcome information, or even reopen a closed plan. Navigate to the closed plan and select "edit completion info" or "reopen plan" from the "more actions" menu.

I'm trying to add a student back to an intervention plan group that I previously marked them as 'completed' in. How do I do that?

Update for 22/23 school year: Students can be added back to an existing group intervention plan even if they were previously marked as completed in that plan. This is a change from previous programming that prevented re-adding.

Why don’t the base and target scores in the intervention graph match the progress monitoring graph base and target?

When you select a FAST progress monitoring measure during setup, the start and goal scores are pulled directly from the student’s progress monitoring in FAST and used to calculate the base and target numbers for the intervention plan graph in Student Success. Action is needed by district staff to ensure the accuracy of the resulting graphs in Student Success. See: Intervention Graph Accuracy and FastBridge Data