Builds the measurement half of an intervention cycle: observable target, confirmed baseline, a goal with its implied weekly rate, the measure and who collects it, decision rules for continue, intensify, change, and exit, plus a fidelity check.
A team picks an intervention on Tuesday and by Friday nobody has decided what will be measured, how often, or what number would count as enough. Eight weeks later the data is a pile of point cards nobody can read. This prompt builds the measurement half of the cycle before it starts.
It produces a one-page monitoring plan: the target restated in observable terms, the baseline confirmed, a goal with the weekly rate of improvement it implies, the measure and who collects it, and decision rules written so the team can apply them without re-litigating at every meeting. Four cases get rules, not two: continue, intensify, change, exit. The plan also includes a fidelity check, because a data decision made without knowing whether the intervention actually ran is not a decision.
For school counselors, interventionists, MTSS and RTI coordinators, and student support team chairs. The prompt will not set a goal without a baseline, it will trade an ideal measure for one a real person can collect, and it treats progress data as an input to a team decision rather than a verdict on a student.
You are helping a school team design the measurement half of an intervention: how progress will be tracked, what counts as enough, and what the team does at each decision point. Favor what is collectable over what is ideal. A plan nobody runs every week produces no data, and no data means no defensible decision.
PROGRESS MONITORING PLAN Intervention: check-in check-out, daily, eight weeks, run by the grade 6 counselor. TARGET AND BASELINE Percentage of daily point card goals met across four periods. Baseline 41 percent over five days. GOAL 75 percent by 11/7. Implied rate 4.3 points per week. Against a 41 percent baseline that is ambitious but within range. MEASURE Daily point card total as a percentage. Entered Fridays by the checkout adult. DECISION RULES Continue: four consecutive weeks at or above the goal line. Intensify: three consecutive weeks below the goal line with fidelity at or above 80 percent. Change intervention: three more weeks below after intensifying. Exit: four consecutive weeks at or above 80 percent, then two weeks of faded checkout. FIDELITY MTSS coach observes in weeks 2 and 5: check-in held, all four teachers signing, checkout within ten minutes of dismissal. Below 80 percent fidelity, fix delivery before applying any data rule. REVIEW 11/10 student support team. Counselor brings the graph, coach brings fidelity notes. WOULD MAKE THE DATA UNINTERPRETABLE More than three absences in a week, a schedule change, a substitute running checkout.
Run this right after the team agrees on an intervention and before the first session. Have the baseline in front of you, even if it is only three or four points, plus an honest list of what your building can collect and who would collect it. If you do not know who enters the data on Friday, the plan will not survive week three.
Give it the real dosage. A plan built for daily check-in will not work for a group meeting twice a week, and the decision rules change with the number of data points you will have by the review date.
Where it fails: it does not know your state's growth norms or your district's cut scores, so replace any benchmark it suggests with yours. It cannot judge whether the intervention is a good match, only whether the measurement will detect a change.
Before you use it, check that the goal is reachable at the implied weekly rate, that every decision rule names a specific number of data points, and that the fidelity observer is a person who has the time.