001This presentation will discuss the title one part A requirement related to the targeted assistance student selection criteria that's been selected for review as part of the program monitoring validation process being conducted by the federal program compliance division at the Texas Education Agency. This presentation is intended solely to provide general information and guidance to Texas LEAs, ESC's, nonprofit subgrantees, and participating private schools receiving equitable services. The content of this presentation reflects the Texas Education Agency's current understanding of statute and applicable federal guidance. The content of this presentation is subject to change as a result of future guidance or other updates provided by federal agencies with regulatory oversight of these programs. This presentation does not constitute legal advice and entities are therefore advised to seek legal counsel regarding the information and guidance provided in this presentation before
002acting upon the education provided. The Texas Education Agency does not permit thirdparty recording or the use of artificial intelligence summary services during its grants related trainings. Attendees of TEA's grant related trainings may not use AI services, language models, applications, interfaces, or assistance to attend, review, or record the trainings. TEA further prohibits any person or entity from using the information included in its grants related trainings to train AI technologies. Any attendees of TEA's grant related trainings who violate this prohibition may be removed from the trainings and may be barred from attending future grants related trainings. Documenting overall compliance for a program requirement may require several forms of documentation to be maintained locally and available upon request by TEA and/or an auditor. To ensure overall compliance with program requirements, LEAs should refer to the program guide and/or
003other program related resources that reference the multiple forms of documentation required to be maintained locally. The documentation requested for submission during the validation process may not include all forms of documentation that are required to be maintained locally. The agenda for today's presentation will include a discussion of the specific program requirement, acceptable documentation for the validation, past validation issues, a discussion of examples, and the resources that are available. One of the things that distinguishes a targeted assistance program from a schoolwide program is that not all students receive services. The LEA sets criteria to determine which students are most in need. According to the statute, in general, the eligible population on the campus are children not older than 21 who are entitled to a free public education and children who are not yet at a grade level
004at which the LEA provides a free public education. Out of that general population, the campus identifies children as failing or most at risk of failing to meet the state's academic standards on the basis of multiple educationally related objective criteria established by the LEA and supplemented by the school. except that children from preschool through grade 2 shall be selected solely on the basis of criteria including objective criteria established by the LEA and supplemented by the school. So let's unpack what that means a little bit. The targeted assistance program participants are only students identified as most at risk of failing to meet the state academic standards. The school doesn't get to identify the whole school. The school doesn't even get to identify a whole grade level. They're only serving those students who are identified as most at
005risk of failing. The other thing we want to talk about is the multiple educationally related objective criteria. Multiple means that there's more than one. So because we're talking about objective criteria, we're talking about an assessment. So we're talking about more than one assessment. Examples of that could be STAR reading, STAR math, end of course exams. The LEA would be identifying more than one of the assessments that they were going to use as criteria for helping determine which students are most at risk of failing. for those students who are in preschool through grade two. The LEA also establishes multiple criteria, but it's developmentally appropriate. It may also include objective criteria, but can also include teacher judgment, parent interviews, teacher checklists, and other items. So the LEA establishes the basic criteria that are going to be used
006at all of its targeted assistance campuses, but that criteria can be supplemented by each individual campus. So they use the LEA selection criteria. If the campus chooses to supplement the LEA's criteria, they would write the criteria that they were going to use to supplement it in the campus improvement plan. The campus would create one list of students to be served based on the multiple criteria so that the campus serves those students who are in most need of assistance. So for item 1.1, the LEA would submit evidence of the LEA's selection criteria that is to be used by its targeted assistance programs. Acceptable documentation for this would include relevant pages from the district's dis district district improvement plan describing the LEA selection criteria. So the LEA would spell out what those criteria are, uh what they
007were going to be for students in grades 3 through 12. And then if they were serving students who were preschool through grade two, they would also establish criteria that would be developmentally appropriate for those grades. Then if the campus if the LEA has a campus that is uh supplementing that criteria, they would also submit relevant pages for the campus improvement plan describing how the campus has going to supplement the LEA's criteria. Yeah. Issues that may result in an improvement needed status for this item include the auditable documentation was not submitted. Documentation submitted does not reflect the use of multiple educationally related objective criteria for grades 3 through 12. documentation submitted does not reflect developmentally appropriate criteria for grades preschool through two if those grades are included in the LEA's targeted assistance programs or the documentation
008is not for the school year specified in the validation. Some of the common issues that we have found during validations of the student selection criteria are that the criteria don't specify what the particular cut point is. For example, rather than just saying the state assessment in reading, the LEA should say below grade level on the state assessment in reading or specify some other score specific to the assessment that they are using. Another issue is that sometimes one or more of the criteria are not educationally related. Uh we have seen references to COVID COVID lag. CO's not an educationally related criteria. It might have an effect on other criteria such as the assessments, but it in itself is not educationally related. We've also seen criteria that said something like, "We serve all students in grade two
009to help them prepare for the third grade state assessment test." That's not really narrowing anything down. Targeted assistance program can't serve an entire grade. It would only serve the students in that grade who are most at risk of failing. Here's an example of where the criteria are appropriately defined. So you have the assessment tool that we used for the grades listed. You have the date the assessment will be uh administered. And you have reference to a cut score, what will be used to determine whether the student is at risk or not at risk. Here's an example of a set of criteria that received an approaching compliance status. Um, if there are multiple criteria listed, there is uh an effort at indicating where the cut point would be for indicating whether a student was at risk.
010Uh the only uh criterion here that we would uh object to would be the the last one there that is listed as COVID lag. Um if that were removed, then this example would be compliant. Next, we will review the resources and support that are available to assist LEAs in completing the program monitoring validation process. In the category of overall process resources, eleas can access the PMV process handbook, instructions, training video, and training slides for tips on submitting documentation and a video on how to navigate the smart sheet work app system. These as well as other programsp specific resources are available on the ESSA program monitoring validations web page. For each requirement included in the validations, there is a guidance document that describes the acceptable documentation as well as training slides and a training video that
011discuss previous findings. These resources are available to eleas to review prior to submitting documentation for selected PMV requirements. Please take advantage of these documents to ensure that the district is informed of the overall process for program monitoring validations and all program specific resources. Complimentary technical assistance and training are available from each regional education service center. ESC contacts for each regional center are located towards the bottom of the TEA Title One Part A web page. Questions related to the program monitoring validations for the Title One Part A program may be directed to Vivian Smurl at essport.ex. texas.gov