May 2008 — Features
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Together at Last
If all of that weren't complex enough, an intermediate tier between general education and special education has emerged. Called "response to intervention," or RTI, it accounts for student interventions that are not yet classified as special education, and may never get that far.
Nevada Joint Union, a small district in northern California's Sierra Nevada foothills, has found that a software solution designed specifically for this RTI layer is providing as much integration between its SIS and IEPs as it currently needs.
Four years ago, the district implemented eSchoolPlus, a webbased K-12 student information management system developed by the Public Sector Pentamation group SunGard. A year ago, SunGard approached the district with a new product called Student Success Plan.
"It's not a full IEP system," says Smith. "It's a module of a larger product that allows us to keep all the student information in one place. It allows the teachers to be involved, of course, but also the counselors and other professionals, and the parents. There's this ongoing success plan that tracks how well they're doing. And for now, it's working for us."
"Special education teachers...were very comfortable with pencil and paper. So back in the day, when computers first began impacting K-12 education, they were the last people the districts wanted to drag into the digital age."-George Saunders, SunGard
Down at the southern end of the Golden State, the Chula Vista Elementary School District has yet to embrace this three-tiered model, but when it implemented its first IEP system in 2003, there was never any doubt about whether it would need a full-featured solution. With roughly 27,000 K-6 students in 44 schools, the district serves an estimated 2,200 special education students on a day-to-day basis. "But we're always moving kids in and out of services," says Maria Grabowski, the district's manager of information technology.
Also a SunGard customer, Chula Vista has been using eSchoolPlus since 1999. The district has since added the company's IEPplus product to generate IEPs. The product is webbased and comes with features for managing the student referral and evaluation process; tracking special education student records; maintaining historical information; and complying with IDEA, state, and federal regulations. It also provides a set of web-based forms for developing the IEPs.
"We needed to get control of our IEP data to provide better services to our students," Grabowski says. "And there's the whole accountability piece. We have to provide annual data submissions federally and to the state, and we needed to do a better job of making sure that the data was absolutely accurate."
