April 10, 2019

The only Special Education Support Software

Christopher Power

Virtual Enterprise Coordinator/Educator

NYC Department of Education / Francis Lewis High School (Education Management, 201-500 employees)

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PowerSchool Special Education is being used as a tool for educators to assist one of the largest populations of the school. This is used schoolwide by the entire special education team, including teachers, administration, counselors and school psychologists. The purpose of the software integration is for various departments, not just one department, to be able to track students' performance, services, and progress. This solves a major issue of miscommunication and a lack of support for certain types of populations of students. The special education population is often underserved, and as a result, it is necessary to implement certain protocols to help support those students, their parents and the educators that support the students. In terms of communication, there is an issue with compliance across departments. Most often the issue is timelines, and identifying what teachers or professionals are required of which forms or evaluations. Using PowerSchool Special Education, the school has a higher quality of delivery of services.

Pros and Cons

It provides all the documents necessary for supporting federal and state laws in regards to the special education program.
Extremely effective in helping to meet reporting standards for students. Teachers that fall behind on deadlines or timelines are given reminders and provided with processes to monitor progress and reporting.
Case management is easy, which leads to 100% compliance. This is important because the best strength is that this platform helps to increase funding by meeting all requirements of the Fed and State.
An additional strength is the collaborative potential it offers. The platform offers student portals to let staff access all resources on demand.

In terms of improvement, the interface is extremely ugly and simple in design, color and icon design. The platform needs to have a much more interactive and appealing interface so that use is more comfortable.
For parents, their side of the platform has a lot of options. That needs to be simplified. I think less and more drop downs within the key menus would help.
The disability codes are very lengthy. Perhaps there are easier or faster ways to access subsections to select.

Likelihood to Recommend

PowerSchool Special Education is well suited in one specific area: special education in elementary, middle and high schools. It works here due to the nature of the platform, which focuses on meeting the needs of students with all disabilities. The software offers information on specific cases, students, as well as Academics. This supports the mission of supporting all students and making it easier for educators, parents, and administration to be more heavily involved in tracking, monitoring and supporting students. When using PowerSchool Special Education, it simplifies the IEP process. Collaboration is one of the best abilities the software provides. There is a need to track program eligibility, including 501 accommodations and Title 1, and in a school with such a large population, the functionality that this software offers to users is important.

PowerSchool Unified Classroom Special Programs Feature Ratings

Return on Investment

There is also a positive impact on ROI for the school. Utilizing this software provides the school with the ability to increase the potential it receives in Title 1 funding. Title 1 funding is a major source of funding for inner-city schools in particular.
Normally, the IEP and tracking process is lengthy, filled with paper, and often takes more time than necessary. Utilizing this software speeds up the process and provides clear requirements to be met, which reduces the number of questions and confusing meetings or papers left in teacher mailboxes.
I have not experienced a negative return on investment with the software, because, without it, the paper trail would be too lengthy and the process would be much more convoluted, with long meetings, long sheets of paperwork, and missed deadlines due to a lack of clear collaboration.

Alternatives Considered

There is no other software on the market that is specifically focused on improving the support of special education programs. PowerSchool Special Education system has a similar interface and structure that Moodle Rooms offer; however, Moodle Rooms is for content management and student management. PowerSchool Special Education is not related to course curriculum management, it is primarily focused on special education programs. Managing special education programs can be very difficult and stressful. It is impossible to successfully comply and healthily support a special education program without tools such as PowerSchool Special Education. Even more important than what other software does do for schools and educators, this platform makes it more convenient for families. Electronic forms and parent portals make processes easier.

Other Software Used

Google Classroom, Adobe Flex, SchoolMessenger

Deployment Types	Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating Systems	Unspecified
Mobile Application	Apple iOS, Android

PowerSchool Unified Classroom Special Programs

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