Case Study: Special Education Management

The Client:
Memphis City Schools
District Type: Large Urban
Total SPED Students: 16,000+

The Project:
EasyIEP™ Implementation

The Challenge:

Public Consulting Group (PCG) was called in at the 11th hour to quickly implement an electronic special education management system to monitor compliance and to create Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) after a previous vendor had failed to successfully deploy a system within the district’s desired timeframe (over a year). Memphis sought to increase compliance with federal and state regulations, control costs, and streamline its special education management process.

The PCG Approach:
PCG was able to implement its web-based EasyIEP™ special education management system and rain over 800 Memphis users in roughly six weeks.

In addition to getting the system up and running in record time, PCG customized the system to meet specific Memphis needs, with Memphis-specific documents, work-flow tabs, manual and how-to guides, and additional data fields.

Soon after the implementation was completed, staff reported being able to spend more time with the students, thanks to the significant reduction in amount of paperwork.

The Result:
Staff began using EasyIEP™ on January 10, 2007. Soon afterward, the district was able to create more than 32,000 total documents and over 6,000 IEPs. Memphis can now report OSEP and EDFacts data automatically to the state and federal education data agencies.

Data that used to take hours to track down is now available at the click of a button. Educators report they can now create an IEP in about 15 minutes, rather than the prior all-day process.

EasyIEP™ puts Memphis in a far better position to comply with No Child Left Behind. The system eliminates duplicate data entry, dramatically reduces the time needed to prepare an IEP, manages reports, and allows the district to report more accurate data. The system gives the district a much better grasp on how special education students, both individually and as a group, are performing in the system. It also gives educators significantly more time with students, as it dramatically cuts time spent on paperwork. And it helps Memphis minimize the number of private placements outside Memphis schools.