Orientation · Factors
What is a factor?
A factor is one of four attributes the rubric rates inside every domain. Factors live inside domains: if domains are the five areas of need, factors are the four questions asked about the service in each area. The four attributes are the same in every domain. What changes is the rating each one gets, because it's rated against the specific service that domain documents. This is where the rubric's twenty ratings come from: the same four questions, asked once per domain.
| Factor | What it rates |
|---|---|
| A | Type, frequency, and nature of the service — how much, and how often |
| B | Required provider credentials — who must deliver it |
| C | Required grouping or provider-to-student ratio — what staffing it needs |
| D | Required equipment or technology — what tools it needs |
Each factor is rated 0–3 (none, minimum, moderate, significant). The four measure different kinds of intensity: a service can be small in amount but require a rare specialist, or modest in amount but require near-constant 1:1 staffing, or depend on a device the student cannot participate without.
What holds steady across domains, and what shifts
All four factors keep the same shape from one domain to the next:
- Factor A escalates by how much service the student needs and how much of their time it occupies: occasional and targeted at the low end, regular and structured across the week in the middle, daily and structuring much of the day at the top.
- Factor B escalates by how specialized the required provider is: typical special-education staffing, then targeted competencies beyond general practice, then advanced expertise the service cannot work without.
- Factor C escalates by how often a reduced ratio is required: needed intermittently, then planned for specific times, then near-constant across the day.
- Factor D escalates by how dependent the student is on the equipment: used occasionally, then relied on routinely, then essential to participate at all.
What shifts is the domain-specific content that fills each factor in. That's most visible in Factor B, but it isn't only B: dyslexia program minutes live inside Curriculum's Factor A, and a dyslexia program's fidelity group size inside its Factor C.
What Factor B names differs by domain. In Curriculum, the Significant level names specific advanced dyslexia credentials — a licensed dyslexia therapist, or Orton-Gillingham, Wilson, ALTA, or IDA training. In Communication, a licensed speech-language pathologist (or a supervised SLPA) is the Moderate level; Significant requires expertise beyond the SLP — an AAC specialist, a sign language interpreter, a deaf-blind intervener, an assistive-technology specialist. Personal Care / Health names no role; its levels turn on clinical licensure and how continuously clinical judgment is required.
Each factor page walks one factor across all five domains: Factor A, Factor B, Factor C, Factor D.
Rating is based on the IEP
Every factor rates what the IEP requires, not what the student appears to need. Match the level whose language fits what the IEP documents.
Other parts of the rubric
- The five areas factors are rated within: what is a domain
- How the domain scores become a tier: how scores become a tier
- The rating process, start to finish: how to rate a student