the impact of individual learning plans in minnesota

Minnesota Individual Learning Plan Survey

June 2013

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Hobsons conducted a survey of Minnesota educators to find out how many schools currently have all students complete individual learning plans, as well as to identify challenges and best practices.

The survey was conducted May 1 – 20, 2013.

We received 76 responses.

We publicized the survey via an email campaign and the Minnesota School Counselors Association listserv.

Survey Details

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25% of respondents’ schools currently require ILPs for all students.

Lowering drop-out rates and increasing college-going rates are the top two goals of schools that require ILPs.

Stakeholder response generally has been positive.

Teacher/counselor resources, staff buy-in, and easy to use technology are seen as the most important factors for successful implementation.

Time constraints and lack of resources are the most commonly identified challenges.

Survey Highlights

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48 are counselors

14 are principals

8 are teachers

1 is a superintendent

1 is a project coordinator

1 is a transition coordinator

1 is an education software developer

1 is a special education teacher

1 is a paraprofessional

1 in in administrative support

1 is technology support staff

How would you describe your role?

5

Does your school currently have ILPs for all students?

19

57

YesNo

6

What were the key drivers for implementing ILPs at your school?

6

AS AN ALC, WE ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE A CLP FOR ALL STUDENTS.

MAKING SURE STUDENTS ARE TO GRADUATE WITHIN FOUR YEARS.

OUR PERKINS CONSORTIUM HAS HELPED US IMPLEMENT THIS OVER THE YEARS (15-

20?), AND I’VE ADDED MCIS AS A GREAT WAY TO GO ELECTRONIC

SETTING GOALS

WE HAVE A SIX YEAR PLAN IN PLACE VIA NAVIANCE.

I TEACH IN AN INDEPENDENT STUDY ALTERNATIVE

PROGRAM.

7


7

THEY ARE REQUIRED FOR OUR TYPE OF SCHOOL – CARE AND

TREATMENT FACILITY

A DESIRE FOR MORE INDIVIDUALIZED ATTENTION TO EACH STUDENT

COMPLIANCE WITH STATE LAW IMPLEMENTATION OF ASCA MODEL

WE ARE A SMALL SCHOOL. WE SET A PRIORITY OF INDIVIDUALIZED LEARNING FOR ALL STUDENTS AND MEETING ALL

STUDENTS’ NEEDS

I THINK THE WAY THE WORLD IN CHANGING WE HAVE TO

MAKE SURE THAT THE STUDENTS ARE PREPARED.

88

THE SCHOOL COUNSELORS WITH HELP FROM THE PRINCIPALS AND THE SCHOOL BOARD (WHO APPROVED THE PURCHASE OF NAVIANCE FOR USE IN IMPLEMENTING

THE ILPs.

• ACADEMIC NEED• POST SECONDARY SKILLS

• TRANSITION TO EMPLOYMENT• BASIC SKILLS

• MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS• ACCOMODATIONS• MODIFICATIONS

• MEET SPECIFIC STANDARDS• ACT/SAT NEEDS

WE DON’T HAVE OFFICIAL ILPs, BUT WE SET UP A PLAN WITH STUDENTS STARTING

THEIR FRESHMAN YEAR. WE FEEL IT’S IMPORTANT AS A SCHOOL, AND IT ALSO IS

PART OF OUR ROLE AS A SCHOOL COUNSELOR TO IMPLEMENT THIS AS

SOON AS STUDENT ENTER HIGH SCHOOL. WE HAVE BEEN USING NAVIANCE TO

SUPPORT US WITH THESE PLANS.

• ACADEMIC GROWTH TARGETS• SCHOOL ATTENDENCE AND

TARDINESS ISSUES• SOCIAL SKILLS

• BEING INVOLVED IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

• PLANNING FOR COURSES NEEDED IN CAREER INTERESTS


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Which grades participate?

9th 10th 11th 12th8th7th6th

5 8 8 16 18 18 18

When did you implement ILPs for every student?

15 – prior to 2011-2012 school year

4 – 2012-2013 school year

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What information is included in each student’s ILP?

Academ

ic p

lans

Caree

r exp

lora

tion

Annual u

pdates

Strength

s/Nee

ds as

sess

men

t

Comm

unity s

ervi

ce le

arnin

g

Resum

e build

ing

Perso

nality

ass

essm

ent

Learn

ing s

tyle

inve

ntory

Refer

rals

for l

earn

ing s

upport

Perso

nal p

ostse

condar

y goal

s0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

18

13 1416

4

912 13 12

16

1

62

2

12

9

7 65

331

31 2

Not sureNot includedIncluded

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How have constituents reacted to your ILP initiative?

Students Parents Teachers0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

11 1113

42

2

2 2

2

6

2

Not involvedNegativelyNeutralPositively

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How often are ILPs updated?

4

5

1

9Each school year

Each semester

Each month

Other (see below)

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Ideally every school year, but this is not always happening

Goals and academic progress are updated weekly; other areas 3x per year

6 times a year

Twice—students are here for a limited/short amount of time

How often are ILPs updated?

More completely in 7th, 9th, 11th, but at least annually for other grades

Quarterly

Varies—whenever certain activities, meetings, etc. are scheduled

Rarely

Minimum each school year; otherwise as needed

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Which tool does your school use to support your ILPs?

Min

nesota

Car

eer I

nform

atio

n Sys

tem

Navia

nce

Bridges

(a X

ap C

ompan

y)

Caree

r Cru

isin

g

Kuder

ConnectE

DU

Other

(see

bel

ow)

None0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

98

6

1

0 0 0

5

3

15

Other responses:We started using efolio this year without luck

Looking into an electronic form as this year did not work well and want to change to another

GPS and Ramp Up to Readiness

Home grown solution

ISEEK.ORG

Which tool does your school use to support your ILPs?

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If you do not have an ILP plan in place, do you have plans for implementing one in the future?

24

39

YesNo

17

The following factors are critically important to successfully implementing ILPs:

55

15

3 3

Staff buy-in

Strongly agreeAgreeNeutralDisagreeStrongly disagree

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32

8 11

Parent/guardian involvement


18


58

15

3

Teacher/counselor resources


53

18

4 1

Easy to use tech-nology

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Strongly disagree

19


37

27

101 1

Reporting and analyt-ics

Strongly agreeAgreeNeutralDisagreeStrongly disagree 39

24

91 3

Budget

Strongly agree

Agree

Neutral

Disagree

Strongly disagree

20


4228

5 1

Professional de-velopment

Strongly agreeAgreeNeutralDisagreeStrongly disagree 37

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83 1

Curriculum


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What are your desired goals for implementing ILPs:

Enhance career planning

Improve postsecondary results

Increase academic rigor

Improve course planning

Raise high school graduation rates

Enhance student-teacher collaboration

Increase college-going rate

Lower drop-out rates

0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00

3.44

4.16

4.23

4.32

4.56

4.62

5.10

5.32

Weighted Rank

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Getting everyone from homeroom teachers, to parents, to school board on board

Too large of a case load for each counselor

Not enough counselors to effectively manage and work with students!!

Time—teachers are focused on delivering the required subject level standards; there is not adequate time with students built in to our school days.

Time and resources to do it

Finding curriculum writing/implementation time

What are the biggest challenges to implementing ILPs at your school?

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Getting students’ advisors on board. We have always had a continuous learning plan in place and now have changed the title to ILP as we move forward. Getting all students to enter data on their Naviance account presents issues at times because of limited access to computer labs.

Ability to follow through and track them. We tried for just our GT students, and it was very difficult and wasn't maintained. Buy in and usefulness.

Time and class size


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Staff time and resources. We do not have enough time to with the current staff we have, but adding this will be a burden unless more FTE's are added.

Administration and having others realize the importance of counselors being involved/not having teachers take over ILP

TIME—both in the classroom to implement and maintain the ILP and counselor to student ratio time constraints

Resources, staff buy-in


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Lack of access to computers. They are all tied up with testing most of the spring.

Another thing for teachers to do! Not enough time in the day/year.

None

Resources for teachers and counselors, adequate time for implementing, teacher buy-in, money for curriculum updates

Time and staffing—not enough of either

Lab space and pulling students from classes


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Funding, having an adequate amount of staff to make this proposed mandate realistic

Time and energy

Resources and time, and who will be responsible

We aren't really looking at implementing ILPs at this point, so I can't say we've spent much time thinking about the challenges. As with any new initiative, I imagine the biggest challenge is finding the time and financial resources to plan, train, and get buy-in on a brand new plan that we would want to be high-quality and useful.


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Right now we have a very "lean" model when it comes to our staffing. So we have the desire to move forward with ILPs but have limited time and resources to work on the implementation. However, we have been looking at how to do it and what we need to do to make sure we can successfully implement it. If we had a component to Naviance that could make this step easier, that would be an excellent help.

Counselor to student ratio

They are not meaningful to students. Difficulty finding time to complete and update them.


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The high needs of our students (98% free and reduced lunch) and the academic challenges of students not passing all required classes

Starting mid-stream is difficult. Since this is our first year of implementation, our seniors will graduate with only one year on the ILP. By the time we get through our first class, who goes through grades 9-12 with it, it will be a smooth, refined process.

Time and the lack of staff

Time, money and man power


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Counselor time. I am half-time 7-12 Counselor and half-time District Assessment Coordinator. I also am the NHS advisor and Student Council Advisor, and I coordinate our scholarship program.

Personnel & technology. Who does it, and when does it happen? Where is it kept? Is it easily accessible to all staff members and students/families?

Time and information on implementing ILPs

Cost, time and management

Finding time to learn about ILPs


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The amount of time and collaboration needed when teachers and parents are involved with the student in setting goals and plans. Doing interest and skills assessments with students are useful but again take considerable time away from curriculum instruction time. Having the technology tools can be a benefit but still personal connections and contact time are keys to successful career / post high school planning.

Identifying relevant goals for students. Assigning relevant courses to those goals.

Admin, teacher and counselor buy in


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Making a coordinated effort for priority, planning and implementation. I feel that general staff will feel this is the counselor responsibility not necessarily a shared one.

Resources! We don't have enough people or funding!

Time to do this and resources to make this a reality.

Working this into the school planning with all of the curricular requirements.

Finding time in the day for student to work on them

Making sure that all staff have the appropriate training to make this transformation work


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Getting computer access for students, teachers, parents, and counselors to utilize the tool. It takes such a long time for students to log-in to the computer, then to figure out what their username and password are for their Naviance/Family Connection account. We also struggle with not having a point person who is well trained with the tool to train teachers to use the tool. There just not enough time to implement such a great tool.

No monies for counselors, resources, and time to work meeting each student's individual needs


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Buy-in! Making sure the ILP is in a format that is user-friendly and easy to use but is engaging. With a small number of counselors (1:510), staff buy-in would also be essential.

ILPs should compare each individual's scores at the beginning and end of the year to see what the student accomplished during the school year. Currently, scores are treated as an aggregate. It’s meaningless.

Scheduling time and students being on board and taking ILP's seriously


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Staff buy in!!! MUST be something easy for them to do that doesn't require a lot of extra work on their part.

Scaling the process to 3000 students

Limited staffing to assist with this

Student buy-in and parent support

Carving out the time to make the interactions and work surrounding ILPs both meaningful and relevant. Developing curriculum to meet student need and district expectations is also challenging.

Lack of knowledge on how to implement


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Time for effective interactions to take place. Structure for those interactions to take place. Skill capacity for teachers to implement and supervise the ILP. This is not what HS is—radical paradigm shift.

Lack of knowledge on how to implement

Resources and time

Time

Support and time

Training time for all staff and money to support its effective use


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Finding the right person who is qualified and the students trust to work with students. It is time consuming and the person must be willing to put in some extra work. An extensive knowledge of the curriculum, student test results, and college planning are important. I am the testing coordinator, I teach a college credit class, I have been principal in the building for 8 years, I have done college planning for our seniors for the past 11 years - I have a strong knowledge of all the pieces. We are small enough for this to happen. I don't think this will be effect without the counselor having a broad knowledge base and access/understanding of all the tests/inventories completed by students.


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Time for teachers to meaningfully develop and follow ILPs. Our teachers see 200 students a day.

Time. Offering a transition course or careers course

Time

Money and staff buy-in to the programs

Time

Time constraints

IF this is going to be of value to anyone, it needs to be a meaningful, useful, quick and easy to do. Quite honestly, I feel it now is just one more piece of paperwork we complete to satisfy a requirement


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Overcoming the doubts of the teachers and parents

Teachers having time to track and enter data

Lack of point person, lack of school counselor

Keeping plans up to date, following plans when courses and standards change, students switching schools - will these follow with transcripts?? parent and student "buy in" to the plans, is this a "one time deal", technology and computers to support the plan, teachers actually taking the time to complete these with students and review them with students, school budgets


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Attitudes of people involved and people not following through for student are "At Extreme Risk" of not graduating on time with peers

Staff buy in. Teachers and counselors must believe in the value in order to make them happen.


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Many thanks to the Minnesota educators who shared their time and insights.

Thanks to the Minnesota School Counselors Association and the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals for helping us publicize the survey.

Thank you!

the impact of individual learning plans in minnesota

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