As the Stepwell team is getting ready to head out to Portland, OR. this weekend for this year’s National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE) conference, we’ve been reflecting on what we’ve learned from the states that we’ve talked to in the past year.
One of the major things we’ve realized in talking to special education officials from different states is that many of the struggles that people face when trying to monitor compliance with the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA) come from having tools and solutions that don’t fit the structure of compliance monitoring. Compliance monitoring by nature needs a smooth workflow structure that allows for people to move paperwork back and forth and communicate about what work is being done. While there are many tools that provide solutions to one small portion of the process, they often aren’t compatible with each other and require data to be transferred manually from one system to another.
These systems make it hard to track where work needs to be done, who needs to do it, and by when. By relying on email or paper mail to send updated copies of forms, it is easy for things to get lost in inboxes or for people to accidentally grab an out of date copy. It can be hard for special education officials to tell when work is being done by someone else because it would be tedious to have to write, or read, constant progress updates on every file.
With all of these challenges in mind, Stepwell takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of trying to fix a stand-alone pain point, we designed a workflow-based solution to a workflow issue.
With Stepwell’s user-friendly workflow automation, it is easy to see where work needs to be done and when progress is being made. The dashboard is designed to make it easy for people to see what work they have on their plate and when things need to get done. Notifications and an inbuilt communication system make it easy to communicate about what resources are needed by each person and what forms need to go where.
With one integrated platform, Stepwell simplifies IDEA parts B and C compliance for everyone involved. Stepwell’s workflow structure allows us to address many of the common struggles with managing compliance in one elegant solution.
We would love to hear your feedback and answer any questions you have about Stepwell’s design and features. On Sunday, October 15, the Stepwell team will be hosting a meet and greet at the Raven and Rose from 5:00 – 7:00pm to give people a chance to learn more about how Stepwell’s single collaborative platform optimizes IDEA monitoring and compliance. If you’re at this year’s NASDSE conference, we hope that you will join us for an evening of cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and networking!
For more information, contact Lawrence Baisch at lawrence.baisch@redcedarsolutionsgroup.com or by phone at 415-450-5926.