Challenge
- Incomplete IEP process
- Poor access and tracking
- Records not updated
- Students falling behind
Products & Solutions
Results
- Accurate, updated, and accessible IEPs and other special education documents
- Student records always kept current
- Improved efficiency saving nearly two full weeks of staff time
- Increased compliance from 50% to 92%
In a perfect special education world, teachers and administrators would have more time, easy access to accurate IEPs, and collaborate often with other stakeholders to enhance students’ educational experience.
Dillingham City School District was struggling with an outdated, paper-based system that often forced teachers to brave the harsh Alaskan winter weather to walk across an icy parking lot to a separate building for files. They had difficulty keeping track of current IEPs, a lack of collaboration and communication between educators, and poor state compliance.
The district, which had been using PowerSchool SIS for student data management, added web-based PowerSchool Special Programs, which simplifies special education and programs management. The district experiences up-to-date, easy-to-access IEPs and reduced administrative effort—leaving time for educator collaboration on IEP development and improving state compliance. Plus, there were no more unnecessary trips across an icy parking lot to search through paper records.
“PowerSchool Special Programs has been an excellent solution that is making us nearly 50% more efficient, saving at least 70 administrative hours every year, and has improved state compliance from below 50% to 92%,” says Elizabeth Clark, Special Education Coordinator and former Special Education Teacher at Dillingham City School District.
Dillingham City School District
Nestled on the edge of Wood-Tikchik State Park, the largest state park in the United States, Dillingham City School District in Alaska serves just over 400 K-12 students in three schools.
Dillingham City has six special education teachers and itinerant specialists devoted to more than 10 specialized programs involving special education.
Prior to PowerSchool Special Programs, Clark recognized that the district’s paper-based special education system was confusing and didn’t accurately keep track of current IEPs. Educators struggled to find the most current document, and ultimately, staff collaboration was non-existent because access to current information was limited.
Built by educators for educators, PowerSchool Special Programs offered Dillingham City a fully web-based and customizable solution to manage compliance, intervention, and all special education services with real-time updates and single sign-on access with PowerSchool SIS. Users found the system easy to use with intuitive workflows that improved efficiency.
“With PowerSchool Special Programs, both general education and special education teachers now have easy access, related service providers can now enter their reports into the IEP paperwork itself, rather than submitting reports to the department, and overall workflow has become much more streamlined and efficient,” says Clark. “We now know at a glance the most recent documents, and it has helped to create a culture of knowledge management and sharing district-wide.”
Improved communication and collaboration
Empowering teachers by giving them necessary information at their fingertips leads to greater general education participation in the special education process. When Dillingham City School District gave their educators better access with PowerSchool Special Programs, they started seeing positive results immediately, including more informed IEP meetings.
“We’ve seen a massive turnaround in our paperwork now starting to positively affect our collaboration between general and special education staff,” Clark says. “Anybody with access to PowerSchool Special Programs now magically has access to their student’s IEPs. So there’s no more tracking down special education teachers, trying to print a file, trying to remember where your file was within the filing cabinet… These challenges have been completely eliminated.”
Increasing the accessibility of special education documentation has changed the conversation between general education and special education staff.
Dillingham City sees improved collaboration across departments. “Recently I was at an IEP meeting where a general education teacher asked about accommodations, modifications, and discussed goals in depth at the meeting. This is a pretty big jump for us. It’s really cool to see a computer program that facilitates this kind of valuable collaboration.”
Before PowerSchool Special Programs, the process for notifying classroom teachers that a student in their class had an IEP was manual, involving either downloading and emailing the information, or printing and hand delivering IEPs. Now teachers receive alerts within the system for IEPs, 504 plans, intervention plans, or other documents. Once they receive the alert, teachers can open it, see what accommodations or support are needed for that student, and act.
“Our special education teachers love the program. Every day I get an email saying, ‘I can’t believe that you can do this in PowerSchool,’” says Clark.
Saved time and improved efficiency
When teachers spend too much time on paperwork and administrative tasks, student instruction time suffers and teachers can experience burnout from trying to get it all done. While IEP documentation will always be necessary, PowerSchool Special Programs can lessen the administrative tasks by streamlining processes.
For Dillingham City, the improved workflow and elimination of many menial tasks have resulted in more valuable staff time. According to Clark, what once took “hours and hours to match page numbers to signature pages and dates can be done by simply hitting the finalize button and the paperwork is filed.” Previously, one part-time support staff was spending four hours each day filing special education paperwork, making labels, and organizing folders. Now that the district has gone mostly paperless with PowerSchool Special Programs, this administrative time has been reduced to one hour per week.
“Her work is now devoted to things that make a bigger impact in the district,” Clark says. “Her latest project was a parent satisfaction survey. Now, through collaboration with parents, we can make targeted actions to start to improve our program. It’s opened up an entirely new world for us to do the things we wanted to do but don’t have the time to do.”
Efficiencies have also allowed the part-time employee to take on some of Clark’s responsibilities and allow her to focus on other high-level activities. Previously, Clark handled initial compliance monitoring as the lead contact for teachers on clerical or compliance issues with files. Now, however, the part-time employee handles this role.
“I am now able to focus my time on compliance reviews for content within the IEP, reviewing goals for measurability and functionality, and having discussions with teachers about ways to improve their writing practices to make student IEP’s transparent and functional. I am able to analyze trends I am seeing in IEP content, and drive professional development and district guidances and procedures based on the needs I now have the time to identify and analyze,” Clark says.
Improved compliance
PowerSchool Special Programs helps educators stay in compliance with federal and state laws by providing intuitive, guided actions and business rules aligned with IDEA and other guidelines. Reporting functionality helps manage compliance, identifying timelines and which teachers are on track or which teachers have fallen behind.
The system has helped nearly double Dillingham City’s compliance accuracy. Prior to implementing PowerSchool Special Programs, the district was less than 50% compliant in their state compliance audit.
“We had to do a lot of task analysis to see where the breakdown in communication was. Over and over it was paperwork errors. We had technical errors, dates didn’t match, and all these silly little things that really brought down our compliance numbers,” says Clark. “Now, with PowerSchool Special Programs, we’re at 92% compliance. Our mission statement is 100% compliance and by the next audit we’ll be there.”
Rapid Results
PowerSchool Special Programs is designed to support districts with accurate, timely student data to meet results-driven accountability requirements—which in turn positively impacts student education and growth.
“I’m a firm believer in data-driven decisions and PowerSchool Special Programs is helping inform our teachers to improve student instruction and learning. Just as teachers are expected to use data to drive instruction, it has been a rewarding opportunity to use data analysis to drive systemic change,” Clark says. “I think that whoever uses PowerSchool Special Programs is going to see an immediate, instant result. And then they will continue to see even better results the more they embrace it throughout the years. It’s just an amazing program.”