This 5-minute video introduction introduces leaders new to Forefront to the platform:

Forefront helps school and district leaders make classroom assessment data more visible and accessible. Leaders can use Forefront to monitor assessment and curriculum implementation, explore performance patterns, support teachers, and prepare for collaborative conversations.

The pages and dashboards available in your account may vary based on your district’s configuration and the instructional programs it uses. This article introduces:

Where leaders begin in Forefront
How to review pacing and implementation
How to access the reporting suite
How to navigate to classroom-level data

Start from your leader landing page

After logging in, leaders may begin on a district-created dashboard or Forefront’s default pacing page, which is site-specific. District-created dashboards are designed around local priorities and may include selected reports, performance indicators, or links to commonly used resources.

If your district does not use a customized dashboard, the pacing page provides a high-level view of assessment activity across classrooms and grade levels for a specific site.

Note: Because dashboards are configured locally, the first page you see may differ from the page shown in the video.

Review pacing and assessment implementation

The pacing page helps leaders see where assessment data has been entered across the organization.

Use the filters and navigation options on the page to review information by school, grade level, or subject, depending on your district configuration.

The pacing view can help leaders consider questions such as:

Which assessments have been administered?
Where has data been entered?
Are classrooms progressing through assessments at a similar pace?
Are there schools or grade levels that may need additional support?
Are expected assessments missing from the available data?

The pacing page provides an implementation-level view. It does not, by itself, explain why a classroom may be ahead, behind, or missing data. Leaders should use the information as a starting point for follow-up conversations rather than as a stand-alone measure of implementation quality.

Use reports to monitor implementation

There are multiple ways to navigate to the reporting suite. You can select Reports from the left-hand navigation menu to access the reporting suite. In the above video, we model how to click on the name of an assessment system or instructional program to access the reporting suite.

The reporting suite allows leaders to move from a broad implementation view to a more focused analysis of assessment results.

Depending on the selected report and your permission set, you may be able to view data by:

Grade
Building
Instructional program or assessment system
Academic term
Student group

The filters available will vary by report and by the data configured in your district. Learn more about the reporting suite.

Explore performance patterns

The reporting suite includes visual displays and tables that help leaders examine patterns across students, classrooms, schools, and assessed skills. Reports can support questions such as:

What strengths are visible across a grade level or school?
Which skills appear to require additional instructional attention?
Are patterns consistent across classrooms?
Which student groups may benefit from a closer review?
Where might leaders need additional context from teachers or instructional coaches?

Select parts of a chart, table, or filter panel to narrow the information displayed.

The colors and visual categories provide an efficient overview, but they should be interpreted alongside classroom evidence, curriculum pacing, student work, and teacher observations.

Save or revisit useful reports

As you become familiar with the reporting suite, identify the reports and filter combinations that are most useful for recurring leadership conversations. Learn how to save and share reports. For example, leaders may return to selected reports when preparing for:

Grade-level meetings
Professional learning communities
Instructional leadership meetings
MTSS conversations
School improvement planning
Curriculum implementation reviews

District-created dashboards may also provide direct access to reports that have been selected for local use. Learn more about dashboards.

Navigate to a classroom-level view

Leaders can move from organization-wide data into individual classroom views to better understand what teachers see. Instructional coaches and other instructional leadership can also access student results, enter data, and support teachers in interpreting assessment results.

The classroom overview provides a more detailed view of student performance across assessments. From there, leaders may be able to access:

Instructional program pages
Student profiles
Gradebook information
Classroom performance patterns

Viewing the classroom page can help leaders support teachers with navigation, prepare for collaborative meetings, and understand how organization-level patterns appear at the classroom level. Access this teacher overview to better understand and support teachers in Forefront workflows.

Support productive collaborative meetings

Forefront can help teams spend less time assembling data and more time discussing student learning. Before a collaborative meeting, leaders and facilitators can:

Identify the question the team needs to explore.
Select the most relevant report or classroom view.
Apply the appropriate filters.
Review patterns without drawing conclusions too quickly.
Prepare questions that connect the data to instruction and student work.

Useful discussion questions may include:

What do we notice?
What additional context do we need?
Which patterns are consistent across classrooms?
What might students understand or misunderstand?
What instructional response should we consider?
What evidence will help us know whether the response is working?

Learn more about how to use an assessment to drive instruction.

Continue learning

Some districts may also provide embedded professional learning through the Professional Learning section of Forefront. Learn more here.

Forefront also offers webinars, professional development, and expert coaching to help leaders use assessment information in collaborative meetings, instructional planning, and implementation monitoring. Find some of those resources linked below:

Getting Started for Leaders (30 min): Understand how Forefront can be used to support data collection processes, the most valuable tools for teachers, and how to easily access the Reporting Suite to look at instructional trends.
Help Doc: Understanding Proficiency in Forefront: Learn how Forefront calculates standards proficiency for students, both for what is visualized in the student wheel and overview page.
Help Doc: Entering Data: Learn how teachers enter data as well as tips and handy tools to expedite data entry.
Intro to Forefront Reports (Part 1): This webinar is for teachers and leaders that are new to the Forefront reporting suite. Gain a basic understanding of how to navigate to access and generate reports, the main categories of visualizations available, and how Forefront can support data-driven instruction more generally in this 30-minute webinar.
Getting Deeper with Forefront Reports (Part 2): Dig deeper in the Forefront reporting suite and start thinking about growth! In this 45-minute presentation, you will learn how to generate more complex reports, particularly reports that focus on growth. Teachers and leaders with data from multiple assessments will be able to follow along and create reports that give a deeper understanding of student learning as it evolves over time.