Hueneme Elementary School District’s MTSS Success: 4% Math and 3% ELA Gains

Learn how Hueneme Elementary School District in Port Hueneme, CA, transformed its Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) implementation using Panorama to improve students' academic performance and build educators' leadership capacity.

We spoke with Helen Cosgrove, Associate Superintendent of Education Services, and Irma Melgoza-Vasquez, Senior Director of Student Support Services, to hear firsthand how Hueneme’s efforts are making an impact.

Challenges

• Hueneme's administrators and teachers sought a more structured, streamlined MTSS process to support all students.
• Leaders knew they would need access to meaningful, actionable whole-child data to understand and support each student's unique needs.

• While the district had MTSS teams in place, they sought a system, guidance, and tools to strengthen their MTSS efforts.

Solutions

• Panorama Student Success
• Panorama Surveys
• Panorama Professional Development

Results

• Hueneme achieved a 4% gain in math scores and 3% in ELA across multiple grade levels, breaking a pattern of limited growth and marking a key step forward.
• Data-driven goals led to visible progress, energizing staff and fostering a culture of success across the district.
• The district developed stronger MTSS leadership teams with improved capacity to leverage data and ensure targeted, effective student supports.

Challenges

Refocusing to Maximize the Impact of MTSS

Hueneme Elementary School District, a TK-8 school district of 7,140 students, faced MTSS implementation challenges that are shared by many districts. For example, Hueneme’s initial MTSS implementation efforts were shaped by a common misconception—that MTSS is primarily a support framework for special education.

As a result, Hueneme’s initial MTSS committee was composed of only special education staff and school psychologists. This team makeup led to the perception that Hueneme’s MTSS was only a pathway for students requiring intensive interventions and special education referrals. While this approach can provide strong support for a subset of students who need the most support, it can leave gaps in addressing the needs of all students across a district.

Recognizing this, Hueneme took proactive steps to broaden the scope of their MTSS team. Associate Superintendent Helen Cosgrove explains, “That’s when we restarted with a more inclusive committee, pulling in principals and teachers to discuss how we were going to respond when kids aren’t learning.”

However, even with a well-rounded team in place, the district still struggled with siloed data, making it difficult to gain actionable insights to guide their MTSS. “We didn’t have anything,” notes Cosgrove. This gap made it difficult for school sites to monitor student outcomes and create targeted interventions.

Empowering Change With Panorama

“That’s when Panorama came in. We started with our Panorama survey, recognizing the need to gain deeper insights into our students' needs,” says Cosgrove. Yet even with this data, the district realized their MTSS needed a framework to ensure actions were consistently implemented between meetings.

“It wasn't until Panorama that we figured out how to actually get MTSS to the school sites,” says Cosgrove. “We held meetings, brought principals and teachers together, and discussed strategies for supporting struggling students. Now, we’re focused on implementing these actions directly at the school sites.”

This marked the start of Hueneme’s journey toward creating a unified, data-driven MTSS that boosted student outcomes with tailored support at every level.

Solution

Laying the Foundation for an Effective MTSS

Now, with Panorama Student Success in their toolbox, Hueneme can now integrate multiple data points—like attendance, behavior, and academics—into one system for streamlined progress monitoring. Student Success gives them a whole-child view of each student’s progress, so it’s easier to identify who needs support.

“One nice thing is that Student Success easily integrates your data,” Cosgrove explains, “and then, everything—the whole child—the whole picture will be in there.”

Student Success centralizes attendance, behavior, academic data, and more to empower districts like Hueneme with a whole-child view of student progress.

Hueneme’s initial partnership with Panorama for student surveys was critical to building a foundation of trust around their data, which became the gateway to expanding their MTSS. By using early insights from Panorama Surveys to begin driving decisions, the district fostered a shared commitment to student growth across all stakeholders and school sites.

Cosgrove notes, “If we hadn’t had that initial data from our Panorama survey, we wouldn’t have been able to move forward into looking at things like behavior and attendance. Sometimes, starting with grades and test scores can be difficult, especially when your MTSS leadership doesn’t have trust yet in the MTSS process. So, by collaborating and working around that new data and creating supports around those results, we were able to build trust. And now, Panorama is helping us move into integrating assessment data for an even more complete picture of student progress.”

This year, Hueneme has especially focused on integrating their aimswebPlus data to track student progress in math and ELA. This integration is a significant step forward, informing decision-making with rich data. “We’re just in the middle of getting started right now,” says Cosgrove of the integration process, “but it’s been really nice to have a clearer picture of where students are in math and ELA.”