What I Learned from Indicator 11 Clean-Up

I know we all know about Indicator 11 being that pesky timeline indicator for initial evaluations and ARDs, but what I didn't know until this year is that before every school year, when school districts must turn in their numbers to TEA, every single error has to be corrected or researched and explained. This year, I helped Mary Duston and Jerry Walker with this task and after hours of clean-up, I have learned a few things about Indicator 11 I thought I would share with you in the hopes that next year, the Indicator 11 errors are more related to timelines than incorrect clicks on a screen. Since you are not the only evaluators who document Indicator 11 items, this might be good information to share with your LSSPs and Diags. So here is what I learned from Indicator 11 clean-up:

Before I start, this is the screen I am talking about: 

Lesson 1: Only complete this screen if you are completing an initial evaluation. 

I know this sounds silly but you would not believe the number of errors that came about from someone clicking even one thing this on this screen for transfer students or reevaluations. Do not complete this form for transfer students with initial timelines. 

Lesson 2: Be sure to always pick who the student was initially referred by and if the reason for the request indicates a claim the child should have been referred for an initial evaluation prior to the current year. 

Most of the clean-up revolved around one or both of these things not being completed for an initial (or one of both of them being completed for an evaluation that was not an initial). I know they were new boxes last year, so that is perfectly understandable, but now that we know what not clicking them, or clicking them incorrectly does, we can fix it. :)

Lesson 3: If you don't enter an initial referral date and FIE consent received date, none of the other timeline dates will register in the report. 

You will get some weird, "bad dates" error, even if you have all of the other dates entered. Another issue I ran into was when I went in to enter these dates, some of the FIEs that were originally on time, ended up being a day late since the evaluators didn't count the 45 days the same way the system did. We then had another error to research but this time it had to be reported to TEA as a late eval. 

Lesson 4: If your evaluation is late, please go in and provide a reason the timeline was not met. 

Mary and Jerry have to send this information to TEA right around the time everyone gets back on contract and it would be nice if they didn't have to contact people at the end of their summer break for reasons evals were late. If this information is already listed, you can have a summer free of someone contacting you for information. 

Lesson 5: If your initial ARD is late, please go in and provide a reason the timeline was not met.

Very similar to the FIE being late, an initial ARD being late is an error, so please make sure you provide a reason why.

These were the main 5 errors that impacted hundreds of students in our district last year. Please help us by checking to make sure they are all corrected as you work with each student so they don't all have to be tackled at the same time by people who don't work with the students impacted. Thanks so much!!

- Nichole