www.pcgeducation.

com

case study:

Special Education Management, Progress Monitoring Software Development, Dashboard Portal Page Development

THE PCG APPROACH

PCG Educations approach embraces the best practice of integrated solutions. Our national experience affords us firsthand knowledge of how school districts across the U.S. struggle with data quality issues when their applications are not integrated. PCG Education offers a fully integrated set of solutions to provide a more holistic picture of students educational history.

THE CLIENT
Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS), Suwanee, Georgia District type: large urban Total special education students: 17,617 Total student population: 161,000+

The IEP Online system provided GCPS with functionality for parent signature pages, doctor prescription forms, and other paper documents to be converted and stored electronically. Since implementing IEP Online, GCPS has enhanced its application with many special customizations, including its own discipline forms and behavior intervention forms. Data collected in STORI assists administrators with trend analysis, displaying students who are meeting and/or not meeting their objectives before their attainment dates within their IEPs. Additionally, using STORI data, administrators are able to determine if they need to assist their teachers by offering alternative methods and/or approaches to achieve student success prior to the end of a reporting period. GCPS district administrators are able to analyze their special education student population achievements and areas of concern by district, school, groups of students, and by teacher. Teachers can judge their effectiveness in the classroom and make adjustments to promote student achievement based on the data gathered to monitor student progress towards objectives in their IEPs. The PCG-designed dashboard portal includes a way to deliver training materials to all users, in video, PDF, and Word document formats. To assist in compliance with eligibility and IEP meetings, upon login, case managers have a view of their caseloads, including a clear view of key timeline dates. To support the caseload view compliance, timelinesensitive reports are available on the dashboard for staff members to run on demand to maintain compliance with eligibility and IEP meetings and testing accommodations. A calendar feature allows users to post upcoming events and communicate with GCPS support staff members without leaving the dashboard. The dashboard also gives administrators a way to monitor server usage to negate any unexpected performance issues and gives them instant notification if a server is not performing. Finally, the case managers data collection status per student is displayed on the dashboard so these staff members can keep track of student data collection.

THE PROJECT
Design and implementation of district-wide management system for special education Design of district-wide progress monitoring data collection software application, including Functional, Academic and Behavioral components Design and implementation of a dashboard portal page

THE OPPORTUNITY
Gwinnett County Public Schools is the 12th largest district in the nation. In 2003, PCG Education was selected by GCPS to design and implement our fully integrated, Web-based special education management system, IEP Online. The GCPS Special Education and Psychological Services department had a goal to make its Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) paperless. At the time, educators in the district either completed IEP documents by hand or through form-based computer software programs. In 2010, GCPS expanded its partnership with PCG Education to include a software application development project called Student Target Objective Reporting Instrument (STORI). STORI would quantitatively assess and monitor achievement on a per student basis of progress made toward objectives within the students IEP. GCPS also requested that PCG Education design and implement a dashboard portal page to give users one location for access to both IEP Online and STORI.

Public Consulting Group, Inc. | 148 State Street, Tenth Floor, Boston, Massachusetts 02109 | tel: (617) 426-2026 fax: (617) 426-4632 Copyright Public Consulting Group, Inc.

Case Study: Management, Progress Monitoring Software Development, Dashboard Portal Page Development

THE RESULT
GCPS educators now use a single integrated platform to support special education management (IEP Online) and progress monitoring (STORI) programs. The integrated functionality enables GCPS to develop individualized student plans and have the objectives from those IEPs appear in STORI for data collection to provide progress monitoring for student achievement. Additional efficiencies include minimized duplicate data entry, simultaneous access to student records and data collection by multiple users, and electronic, real-time stakeholder document review. With IEP Online, the district was able to streamline its process, improve compliance levels, and provide access to data in support of student and program decision-making. The integration of IEP Online and STORI has given GCPS the ability to track effectiveness of interventions and support in special education, leading to better resource planning and student outcomes. Additionally, the dashboard portal page provides GCPS with important compliance information, assisting them with critical timeline data. Please thank your team, a hundred times over, for their willingness to deliver what GCPS needed. This will have a dramatic impact on student learning and achievement, in addition to teacher instruction. I look forward to moving to Support and Maintenance and future projects with PCG. This has been a great experience. Lori Hall - Instructional Support Center Team Lead Gwinnett County Public Schools