It’s March and a parent asks, “Is my child going to ESY (Extended school year)?”
You go into a panic, turn flush and tell them you’ll need to review the data you’ve collected and share it with the ARD committee to determine eligibility. Of course, they give you the spiel of their child going every year. You politely listen and assure them you will review their progress and get back to them.
But in the back of your mind….you haven’t looked at the progress or regression from the past 3 nine weeks. Because, you know, LIFE! Things get busy. It is important, but other deadlines are sometimes more pressing. Now you’ll need to sit down and pull it all out, analyze it, and hope you have enough information to determine qualification or not.
Now imagine, the parent asks you that same question…But THIS time, you have an ESY system in place and you can quickly glance to see recoupment or regression.
Feels a lot better this time, doesn’t it!?
You know you have enough data collected.
You know by a single glance if the child has shown progress or is regressing over the course of the school year.
Here’s how you can do it!
In an Excel sheet or Google Sheet, put each kid on a tab & list their goals along the first column.
Put their 9-week average for each goal in the proceeding columns.
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| Color Coded sheet for ESY data comparison |
Highlight teal or blue for introduced/baseline (new goals/skills).
Highlight Green for progress/recoupment (they regained the skills within a grading period).
Highlight Orange for maintenance (no progress, but no regression for the grading period).
Highlight Red for regression (for the grading period).
Now, every 9 weeks when you do progress reports, you’re going to put the next to each goal and highlight. If the goals are green and orange, they wouldn’t typically qualify for ESY.
If you need more frequent data checks, feel free to include data points from the following times during the school year:
- September Average
- Post Thanksgiving break (1st week back)
- Post Winter break (2 weeks back)
- February Average
- Post Spring break (1st week back)
- Of course, each quarter (9 weeks or 6 weeks depending on your district)
- Also, a great way to determine a baseline is to compare the 4th nine weeks to the September average or the 1st nine weeks to see how summer break affects your students.
- Look at the weeks following 3 day weekends (Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Good Friday, etc.)
If the student is consistently regressing (red), they would qualify for ESY for that skill/subject. They could also qualify despite making progress based on their aggression and / or physical harm to themselves and others (but I won’t get into that, you’ll need to check with your state and district for procedures and protocol).
I hope this is useful for determining ESY qualifications and identifying skills they need to work on! If you need any help or support, feel free to reach out. Grab the ESY tracker here:
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