Cascades™ Whole-Child MTSS Operating System

Cascades provide a pre-defined list of 60 evidence-based interventions to choose from. This is the default set of options. During implementation, if a school district has additional interventions, we can add those to the list.

We display absence type (excused and unexcused) and corresponding reason that we receive from the SIS. While Cascades does not pinpoint root cause, the Whole Child page is designed to provide insights on corelating factors that might be contributing to student absences.

Yes, Cascades workflow is designed to advance best practices and improve maturity and fidelity of the MTSS process.

Yes, Cascades can pull in data from SWIS behavior referrals, standardized tests such as Acadience, iReady, NWEA/ MAP, CAASSP and mental health universal screening tools.

Yes, the interventionists can override the tier recommendation made by the MTSS team. The intake process is designed to provide as complete an understanding of the student as possible to aid the interventionist in making their best professional judgement on the right tier and supports needed.

Yes, the risk identification is domain specific. We can identify risks in each of the four domains independently. During implementation, we review our default early warning rubric for each domain, if required, the school district can adapt this to match their policies.

Cascades has a Truancy Report feature that continuously monitors students that become truant in the preceding 20/40/60/80 days. However, we currently do not have a parent notification feature.

The combination of key insights from universal screening aggregate data, behavior/ ODR aggregate data, and attendance data is designed to provide district wide/ building wide action items.

Yes, Cascades has built-in progress monitoring features to schedule check-ins and track student progress on interventions over time. We offer an integrated progress monitoring approach for academic, behavior, and social emotional/ mental health interventions.

Yes, the system has ready-made dashboards and widgets specifically to understand disparities or disproportionalities in areas of disciplinary practices and provision of intervention support based on gender, race and special education needs.

SAP counselors can be assigned as an external interventionist within Cascades, and the process flow supports data integration and referral process. End of year state SAP reporting is something that can be easily supported since all referral and progress monitoring data is native to Cascades.

IEP process and outcomes remain separate from Cascades, but the system can indicate if a student has an IEP and allow for referrals and interventions for those students within the MTSS framework.

Cascades is designed as MTSS operating system that integrates mental health, behavior and SEL, academics and attendance referrals and interventions. We take a whole child approach and incorporate social determinants and vulnerabilities data. We differentiate ourselves with the intake protocols and progress monitoring for Tier 2/3 interventions and supports provided by internal and external interventionists.

The MTSS team can assign interventions to multiple interventionists (internal and external) for any given referral. All interventionists get automatically notified.

Cascades provides a more unified user experience compared to using multiple systems like Qualtrics. It centralizes and streamlines all the data, referrals, and progress monitoring and integrates progress monitoring for academic, behavior and social emotional/ mental health needs.

Student roster, attendance, office discipline referrals, and academic grades load into Cascades on a nightly basis, while the universal screening and standardized test data follows the administration cycle.

We currently do not have a Parent persona to access Cascades. However, Cascades pages such as the whole child view can be printed as PDFs and shared with parents.

Cascades has robust persona/ role-based security where you only see data based on ‘legitimate educational interest’. - Teachers get to see only their roster of students. - Interventionists get to see only the buildings they support. - Administrators/MTSS leads see students based on their scope of responsibilities. In addition to this design, Widgets that you see on the outcomes dashboard and whole child page can be turned off for specific persona/ role based on school district policy and/or culture.

Cascades professional learning is based on user persona. Typically, the hand on professional development takes between 1 and 3 hours based on persona. Cascades also has built in micro learning video tutorials and training resources for personas like teachers, interventionists, and the MTSS team. These 3–5-minute videos can be accessed any time as a refresher.

The referral process, interventions and goals setting, progress monitoring are the only data schools would input directly into Cascades. All student roster, attendance, academic grades, and office discipline referrals will directly show from the school's SIS.

Yes, all the student data is pre-populated from the SIS system. The only input is the referral details from the person making the referral.

Yes, student specific documents can be uploaded as part of the referral process, intervention intake process and progress monitoring process.