Lower Moreland Township School District was already seeing strong student outcomes. But as the 2,600-student Pennsylvania district grew from three schools to four, leaders saw an opportunity to take a more systematic approach to student support by adopting MTSS to strengthen Tier 1 instruction, interventions, and enrichment.
Challenges
- Lower Moreland opened an additional school building due to enrollment increases, leading to increased fragmentation of systems and data across the district.
- Educators lacked a tool that allowed them to have dynamic, in-the-moment data conversations. They had to wait for data to be delivered on a schedule, and new reports took weeks to turn around.
- Finding specific data could take a teacher 15-45 minutes of manual digging.
- Student behavioral and emotional concerns surfaced by chance, dependent on a teacher notifying a counselor.
- High-achieving students weren't accelerating at the rate the district wanted, and that gap was invisible without a unified data view.
Solution
Results
- After implementing MTSS with Panorama, Lower Moreland saw promising academic gains:
- Fall-to-winter iReady benchmark: at-or-above grade level math proficiency rose from 18% to 33%.
- Growth this year beat the state average by 17 points in math and an impressive 27 points in reading, historically the district's weaker subject.
- At Pine Road (K-3), the share of students reading at or above benchmark roughly doubled: DIBELS from 30% to 61%, iReady from 34% to 66%.
- A unified data view enabled educators to identify Tier 1 gaps.
- For example, comparing iReady, DIBELS, and state assessment data together surfaced a shared phonemic-awareness and phonics gap.
- For example, comparing iReady, DIBELS, and state assessment data together surfaced a shared phonemic-awareness and phonics gap.
- Reports in Solara and Student Success gave educators the tools to identify students in need of support who would have otherwise been missed.
- Educators could get “90-95% of the way there” with AI by generating intervention activities based on student data embedded in Panorama.
- Educators are using the time saved and insights gleaned from Panorama to spend more meaningful, targeted time with students.
Challenges
Lower Moreland Township School District had strong educators and successful practices in place, but much of that work happened in individual classrooms or grades, not across the district. As enrollment increased and the district expanded from three schools to four, leaders knew those disconnected approaches would become increasingly difficult to sustain.
But the district’s data was just as fragmented as its practices. Teachers and leaders viewed assessments, attendance, grades, and interventions across separate platforms or spreadsheets. Comparing multiple measures required moving between systems or manually bringing information together. Without a unified view, educators couldn’t have data-informed conversations that would lead to meaningful change.
Despite best intentions, educators ran into severe limitations with accessing timely, relevant data. Lower Moreland’s previous edtech partner operated on a delivery model, providing reports on a set schedule. Leaders could request custom reports, but they often took weeks to arrive, at which point the data was outdated. Educators could also dig into the systems themselves, but finding the right information could take up to 45 minutes.
For busy educators, this time commitment was a significant barrier. “It’s not reasonable to ask of an elementary teacher who has a half-hour lunch and is going to have 25 seven-year-olds back any minute,” said Scott Cole, Director of Teaching, Learning, and Community Engagement at Lower Moreland. Plus, data conversations depended heavily on each building leader’s comfort and skillset with data, meaning that teachers did not have equitable access or support across the district.
Lower Moreland faced an additional blind spot around students’ behavioral and emotional needs. Historically, Cole said, identifying those concerns was “100% by luck,” and depended on a teacher noticing a change and raising it with a counselor. A quiet student with good grades, solid attendance, and no discipline incidents could appear to be doing well, while other signs of struggle remained invisible.
The district wanted to implement a new MTSS approach to serve all learners. State assessment data showed that some of Lower Moreland’s highest-achieving students weren’t accelerating at the rate leaders wanted, while students performing on grade level had additional room for growth. Without an integrated view of student data, teams struggled to identify who needed intervention or enrichment, and whether a pattern indicated a larger Tier 1 instructional issue.
Solution
Rather than introduce MTSS first and tackle the district’s infrastructure later, Lower Moreland deliberately did both at once. In 2025, Lower Moreland launched a brand-new MTSS process alongside a new data platform: Panorama Student Success. The district chose to "rip off the band-aid," completing transitions at once to shorten the adjustment period and build new processes around better data from the start. “It felt disingenuous to ask [teachers] to do one without the other,” Cole said.
The district ran an RFP to find its MTSS platform, and after hearing from ten national vendors, selected Panorama based on its ease of use and dynamic data. For such a complex district-wide initiative, choosing Panorama “was a pretty easy decision,” Cole said. Teachers specifically loved how they could open the platform and immediately see exactly what they needed, and district leaders cited the ability to manipulate and disaggregate data.
“We've come to love how rich the tapestry of data is and the picture it paints of the student,” Cole said of Student Success.
With Panorama as its data foundation, Lower Moreland built an MTSS model that emphasizes Tier 1, while also creating dedicated time for targeted support. Schools set aside 30 minutes each day for individualized instruction based on student needs. The district calls the period “LIONS Time,” which stands for learn, innovate, opportunity, nurture, and succeed.
Panorama helps teams make those blocks more targeted. Rather than simply seeing that a student is below grade level, educators can identify specific gaps and match students with educators who can address those skills. “Intervention has been powerfully informed by Panorama,” Cole said. Teams progress monitor interventions in Panorama over six-week cycles, then determine whether students are ready to exit the support, need additional time, or require a more intensive approach.
The same process supports enrichment for high-achieving students. Teams can look across multiple indicators to identify students who are excelling and connect them with the appropriate support staff and deeper learning opportunities. For example, the middle school developed a core enrichment model in which teachers create project-based learning opportunities around their own areas of expertise.
Lower Moreland adopted Panorama Solara alongside Student Success. Because Solara is already securely connected to student information, teachers can use the AI-powered tools for intervention group planning even with students they don’t know well. Cole estimates that Solara’s AI tools with student context help educators get “90-95% of the way there,” giving them room to adapt using their professional judgment.
Results
In Lower Moreland’s first year implementing its new MTSS process with Panorama, the district saw promising academic gains across the district. From fall to winter, the percentage of students performing at or above-grade level in math on iReady increased from 18% to 33% district-wide. Year-over-year comparisons also showed the district’s rate of growth accelerating, particularly in reading—an area where Lower Moreland has historically seen less growth than in math.
In fact, Lower Moreland’s growth was 17% higher than the state average in math and 27% higher in reading. At Pine Road, the district’s K-3 school, the percentage of students reading at or above benchmark roughly doubled between fall and winter, with an increase from 30% to 61% on DIBELS and from 34% to 66% on iReady.
Additionally, Panorama’s comprehensive data view is helping educators understand why students are struggling and where to respond. During one Pine Road MTSS meeting, a reading specialist was viewing iReady, DIBELS, and state assessment data together and realized that what they thought were intervention needs actually reflected a broader Tier 1 issue in phonemic awareness and phonics.
“We were looking at all this data together for the first time, and it was really an epiphany,” Cole explained. That insight helped shape the district’s upcoming ELA curriculum renewal, surfacing new non-negotiables for evaluating curriculum partners. “That conversation wouldn’t have happened without Panorama,” he said.
Teams are also using Panorama to identify individual needs that previously could have gone unnoticed. A middle school principal identified several quiet, academically successful students whose Panorama Culture & Climate Survey data suggested they warranted a closer look. And at the high school, the principal used Solara to create a dynamic group of students to monitor based on shared risk indicators. Instead of flying under the radar, these students can now receive the timely support they need.
For Lower Moreland, the best part of Panorama is how it gives educators time and insights to make more meaningful connections with their students. As Cole explained, "You will know exactly the data points about your kids in one minute. And then you can turn your computer off and go be with your kids."
With a strong team and strong tools, the future looks bright for Lower Moreland. “I know what we've been able to do historically as a district based on the skill and the care of our people,” Cole said. “Now coupling that with meaningful, quantitative data that's available at your fingertips at all times is really exciting to me. I see limitless potential for growth.”
