Easy IEP

By Dr Jeff Romanczuk

Introduction

This past February, Sevier County special education teachers officially started developing IEPs in the web-based EasyIEP application. This database was developed and is maintained by Public Consulting Group (PCG). It is being used for more than 60% of Tennessee’s special education students.

SpEd Only, For Now

Next school year, 2007-2008 (once StarStudent replaces Horizon), you will be able to pull up regular education students at your school by clicking on the General Ed filter under “Criteria for Selecting Students to View” in the opening Student tab screen. Right now you don’t have to specify SpEd or GenEd, since only SpEd students are loaded to EasyIEP.

Counting the Minutes

Rutherford County came up with a conversion table to quickly calculate how many sessions of how many minutes per week equal how many hours. It is one of the opening screen documents you can download. You can use minutes, hours, periods, or blocks for the session lengths, but we are recommending that everyone use minutes since this is the only constant one of the four in all settings.

What to Keep in the Paper IEP Folder

For IEP meetings held from now on, we are going to start with requiring that you put the whole final IEP (paper copy) in the student’s IEP folder. We may back off of this in December 2007 (to requiring only the signature pages) after we see how available and reliable are the web-based IEP data. You’ll also need to keep paper copies of the Conference Summary (which isn’t in EasyIEP, but is at http://www.slc.sevier.org/confsum.pdf) and of the signed Prior Written Notice. This document will be added to EasyIEP later, but until then, a couple versions of it are on the SpEd homepage. As we are doing now, a copy of the latest eligibility team summary needs to be in the IEP folder, too, and you (or the School Psychologists) need to send the original to Rebecca to store in the SpEd Department Psych folders.

Getting Started

The gray button bars across the top of each screen are the place to start. The Main Menu of buttons includes My Info (where you can go to change your password, update your job title and contact information, etc.). When you click on the Students button of the Main Menu, you can search for a particular student (type in the first few letters of the last name, then click on View Students). Notice too that there are more and different buttons now available. At the very bottom of the student search screen, you can select View My Caseload. The darker lined students are ones you are case manager for; the white lined students are ones who have you on their IEP team, but not as case manager. If these are wrong, you can change any who are at schools to which you are assigned by pulling up that student’s information, then clicking on the Team button. Change the team to make it correct, then update the database. Be careful about this. The number one rule of database management is don’t make extra work for other people. The only team-type grouping you can’t do as case manager is make yourself case manager for a student. However, the consultant or lead special education teacher for your building can do this for you, or Theresa, Rebecca, Nancy Wohl, or I could do it for you.

Six-Week Progress Reporting

There is a Progress Reporting “Wizard,” but it is under the Main menu, not the Student menu. It’s right in the middle. The progress report has the same number/letter evaluations you’re used, to, but it also give you room to add a narrative comment to each goal. Progress Reports in EasyIEP have nine periods (for schools that do four 9-week terms, but report mid terms as well). Just use the first six to match Sevier County’s six 6-week terms. For students you’ve had and EasyIEP on for all of reporting period 5, you’ll be able to use this wizard when the next grade cards are due.

Goals and Benchmarks are Required

The federal government’s latest reauthorization of IDEA allows for goals covering three years and having no benchmarks for students who are not alternatively tested. However, Tennessee’s match law (due in October 2007) will likely keep annual goals and benchmarks for all special education students. Until we know for sure (that is, for the IEPs you are creating right now), you must include goals with benchmarks for any exceptionality areas addressed by the present levels of performance. You must also report to the parents on each student’s progress on these goals at least every six weeks. (See “Six-Week Progress Reporting” section.)

Direct and Related Services

Remember that Speech is going to be a Related Service unless it is the only service. That is, if the Speech/Language Pathologist is the case manager, then the Speech time comes under Direct Services. If the Special Education teacher is the case manager and the Speech teacher is adding goals/benchmarks to the IEP, Speech time will count as a Related Service. If you are the case manager for the student, you have to be sure your time is loaded under the Special Ed Services button, not the Related Services button.

Help!

If what the manual and quick reference are telling you to do isn’t working, call or e-mail Jeff Romanczuk (748-7711, jeffromanczuk@sevier.org) or one of the building level teacher trainers.