ESSA Planning Requirements

CS plans must:

• Be developed by the LEA in partnership with stakeholders, including the principal, other school leaders, teacher and parents of the school.
• Be informed by student performance on accountability indicators. In Colorado, this currently refers to performance indicators on the School Performance Frameworks (i.e., English language arts and math achievement and growth, science achievement, and postsecondary workforce readiness).
• Include evidence-based interventions.
• Be based on a school-level needs assessment.
• Address resource inequities.
• Be approved by the school, LEA, and CDE.

CS Plan Submission and Approval Process and Monitoring:

• CS plans should be documented within the school’s Unified Improvement Plan (UIP) and submitted through the Online UIP System.
• The timeline for CS plan submission follows the typical UIP submission process:  January for schools on the accountability clock (i.e., Priority Improvement, Turnaround) and April for all other schools. Any schools identified as CS that submit their UIPs in January, even if they have a Performance or Improvement plan type, will be reviewed and provided feedback by April 1. 
• CDE will use the ESSA CS plan embedded within the Quality Criteria to approve plans.
• Once plans are approved, CDE is required to monitor implementation of and periodically review CS plans.
• Once identified, schools will remain CS for three years.
• Schools may exit this category after the third year, if they no longer meet the identification criteria for the year in which the school was identified and they not re-identified in the fourth year.
• CDE has been and will continue to work with stakeholders to determine what actions will be necessary for any schools that do not meet the exit criteria.

TS plans must:

• Be developed by schools in partnership with stakeholders, including the principal, other school leaders, teachers and parents.
• Be informed by student performance for identified disaggregated student group(s) on each accountability indicator that resulted in the school’s identification as TS.
• Include evidence-based interventions to address areas of need.
• For Additional TS schools only, address resource inequities.

TS Plan Approval and Monitoring:

• The LEA determines the number of years a school can be identified for targeted support and improvement before taking additional action. LEAs are responsible for determining what that additional action should be.
• LEAs are responsible for approving and monitoring TS plans. LEAs have the option to create their own document, however, Colorado’s UIP provides a convenient mechanism for capturing the specific ESSA requirements as it aligns well with required plan components. The UIP Quality Criteria includes TS requirements if LEAs choose to document TS plans within the UIP.

Evidence in education is continually evolving and expanding. Driven by growing K-12 research and requirements in federal education law, specifically the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), use of evidence-based practices among teachers, school leaders, and district personnel has become more common over recent decades. Evidence-based practices, and specifically evidence-based interventions (EBIs) as defined by ESSA, are crucial to improving student outcomes and closing gaps in student achievement. 

ESSA defines an evidence-based intervention as an activity, strategy, or intervention that demonstrates a statistically significant effect on improving student outcomes or other relevant outcomes.