The Early Warning System (EWS) Report is a powerful tool launched to enhance the monitoring of student performance and well-being. Designed for educators, school leaders and district administrators, this report provides crucial insights into student risk levels across attendance, behavior, and course performance. By identifying at-risk students early on, the report empowers schools to implement targeted interventions and support strategies, ultimately fostering a more proactive approach to student success.
Note: This article talks about the Early Warning System Report and the data available within it. Please note that this functionality will only be visible to districts with the Early Warning System feature enabled.
If you would like this feature enabled for your district, contact your district Branching Minds administrator for more information.
If you are trying to understand how to configure the Early Warning System thresholds that are generating risk levels on the report, check out this article.
Report Overview
This Early Warning System Report is a comprehensive risk monitoring tool that can help educators and admins identify trends in risks across schools and grade-levels, as well as contextualize each student's case to support proactive decision-making and promote holistic student progress:
Early Identification of At-Risk Students: The report enables educators to quickly identify students who may be struggling, allowing for timely interventions that can improve outcomes.
Comprehensive Insights: By providing data on attendance, behavior, and course performance, the report offers a holistic view of student well-being, enabling more informed decision-making.
Targeted Support Strategies: Educators can tailor their support initiatives based on specific risk factors, ensuring that interventions are relevant and effective for each student's needs.
Overall Risk Analysis and Individual Risk Insights: The report combines a broad overview of student risk levels with detailed individual results. This dual approach allows educators to identify systemic issues while also addressing specific challenges for each student, facilitating timely and effective interventions that promote student success.
Access to Student Records
Every user of Branching Minds who accesses the report will see aggregated results for all students they have access to view, either via nightly syncing with the district's rostering platform or via manual association in the platform directly.
Report Components
The report is divided into 2 tabs: The All Risk Data Tab and the Dashboard.
All Risk Data
The first tab users can view when they click on the EWS Report from the Reports icon on their side navigation menu is an All Risk Data screen that shows a tabular view of all students and their corresponding risk levels. Users can Attendance, Behavior, and Course Performance risks for each student they have access to. By checking the date on Last Synced, they can also see when the platform received any change to the EWS data for the student. They can then use the Actions dropdown to select students for next steps like targeted support or communications.
The risk levels are updated nightly, hence any changes to a student's risk levels will be reflected on the platform and on this report the next day.
Actions Dropdown
Users can select students by checking the box in each row and then clicking the blue Actions button. This allows them to create student groups, generate family communication letters, and take other supportive actions, including:
Adding assessment data
Adding to 'My Students'
Assigning students to teachers
Creating a group
Creating a meeting
Logging family communication
Logging supporting docs
Generating intervention reports
Adding student tags
Sending SECA survey
Administering DESSA assessment
Administering SRSS-IE assessment
Filters
The filters at the top of the page apply across the entire screen. Note that filters operate as an "and" selection when multiple filters are applied. Applied filters can be cleared by selecting them again.
Topic Level: Filter students by different topics like Reading, Math, SEL, and more.
Tier Level: Filter data base don the Tier level for a student, including Tiers 1,2,3, No Tier, Services, and Enrichment. If no topic filter is selected, this will show results for all topics.
Grade Level: Select grade levels to narrow down data.
EWS Risk Level: Filter students based on low, moderate, or high risk in each category.
Student Filters: Filter data based on race/ethnicity, gender, IEP/504 status, and more.
Dashboard Tab
This section of the report offers an aggregated, visual overview of all student risk situations within the school or district. It features multiple sections, each presenting a distinct perspective on student risk, including trends in overall risk and risk levels categorized by specific factors. The dashboard is updated nightly, ensuring that it reflects data up to the previous day.
Filters
The filters at the top of the page apply across the entire report. Note that filters operate as an "and" selection when multiple filters are applied. Applied filters can be cleared by selecting them again.
Grade Level: Select grade levels to narrow down data.
Date Range: Define the time period for which you want to analyze incidents. Dates can be selected by predetermined ranges in the dropdown on the left, while specific dates can be selected in a calendar picker by selecting the white space on the right.
Student Filters: Filter data based on race/ethnicity, gender, IEP/504 status, and more.
Charts and Graphs
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Overall Risk
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Overall Risk
The School and Grade Level Heat Map: Overall Risk provides a visual representation of student risk concentrations across different schools and grade levels. On the X-Axis users can see different grade levels. On the Y-Axis, users can see the schools they are associated to. This heat map highlights the number of students identified as being at moderate or high risk across the 3 categories of Attendance, Behavior and Course Performance, allowing educators to easily identify areas of overall concern.
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Attendance Risk
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Attendance Risk
The School and Grade Level Heat Map: Attendance Risk offers a visual analysis of student attendance concerns across various schools and grade levels. This section highlights the concentration of students categorized as moderate or high risk for attendance, enabling educators to easily identify specific grades or schools where attendance issues are most prevalent. This heat map is an essential resource for fostering a proactive approach to addressing attendance-related challenges within the educational environment.
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Behavior Risk
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Behavior Risk
Similar to the above graph, the School and Grade Level Heat Map: Behavior Risk offers a graphical representation of student behavioral challenges across various schools and grade levels. This section showcases the concentration of students categorized as moderate or high risk for behavior-related issues, allowing educators to see trends and patterns across specific grades or schools and identify who might need the most support to manage behavior incidents.
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Course Performance Risk
School and Grade Level Heat Map: Course Performance Risk
Completing the trio is the School and Grade Level Heat Map: Course Performance Risk heat map that visually represents academic performance across schools and grade levels. It identifies areas where students are at moderate or high risk in their coursework, helping educators target support where it’s needed most.
Breakdown of Risk by Category
Breakdown of Risk by Category
This bar graph displays the number of students flagged for each risk level, by each individual category - Attendance, Behavior and Course Performance.
Below the graph, users can see the number of students flagged for risk:
High risk: Number of students flagged High Risk in at least one category
Moderate risk: Number of students flagged Moderate Risk in at least one category
Low risk: Number of students not flagged High or Moderate risk in any category
Why the bars may have different heights:
Each bar represents the number of students flagged in that specific risk category (Attendance, Behavior, Course Performance) based on the data that has been ingested for that category. There may be differences in the number of students across the categories due to the following reasons:
Not all students have data in every category. For example, some students may not have attendance data that meets the Early Warning System’s risk criteria, while others may have more comprehensive behavior data.
The data displayed here only includes students for whom we have ingested relevant records that match the district’s Early Warning System configuration. If the system hasn’t received or flagged data in a specific category (such as behavior or course performance), those students won’t be counted in that category’s bar.
Essentially, the variation reflects which students have met the data requirements in each category and what has been recorded into the system.
Risks Over Time
Risks Over Time
Time graphs showing how many students have been flagged for moderate or high risk in Attendance, Behavior, or Course Performance risk over time.
Exporting Data
From each visualization, select the three dots at the top right for Download options.
Troubleshooting
No Data
If you see the "No Data" or "Null" message on any of the visualizations, it means that your district does not have any data meeting the selected criteria.
This could be for several reasons:
The selected filter(s) do not apply to any data applicable for your district's dataset
Your district's dataset does not have data provided for some of the fields in the Branching Minds data model. This could happen because there was an issue with mapping the fields from the source system into the Branching Minds data model, and/or because your district does not have data stored in a particular field, or there was an issue with the transfer of the data. Contact our Support team if you believe data should be available and showing up in Branching Minds but is not.