Administrators and managers at state education agencies need to balance a complex variety of responsibilities, including the wide-ranging needs of students, the monitoring of school districts, budget constraints, and the exacting demands of federal and state legislation. It’s important work, but outdated solutions and unclear direction can bog it down.
The Stepwell team knows this, because several of our members have lived it. Andrew Henry, the founder of the company behind Stepwell, worked as a teacher for ten years, and for four years aided schools in writing policy for the implementation of new computer technologies. He later worked as the director of CEPI, an agency that manages educational data in Michigan, for two years.
Meg Ropp, Stepwell’s design director, worked as a data development and support manager at CEPI for two years, and as the director for four years. She previously taught professional development in technology leadership to superintendents and principals.
Living and working in the state education environment provided these team members with an otherwise unattainable insight into the inner workings of how administrative work is conducted in state education agencies. During this time they used technological applications that were meant to improve efficiency and security, but ultimately failed because of the additional effort required from its users to manage it. This software suffered from poor design, direction and implementation.
Our software is crafted with solutions in mind. The Stepwell team understands that there should not be a learning curve associated with software that is meant to simplify a process. Our solution is to offer a user-friendly platform that integrates all actions involved in IDEA Parts B and C compliance with page-by-page instructions, timelines, comprehensive data visualizations, and optimized workflow between users to improve the administrative experience.