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Frequently Asked Questions
In the fast paced, high stakes world of special education, intense collaboration around results driven accountability is the key to not only compliance, but to system improvement at every level.
Stepwell’s core is the work of LEA’s in response to specific findings around Parts B and C indicators and general supervision monitoring activities. Stepwell ensures that the work itself is well defined; the right data is available at the right time to inform root cause analysis and provide a firm foundation for improvement planning; best practice is “automatic,” embedded in every step a district takes in response to a finding; a communications engine optimizes requests and notifications to ensure they are directed to the right person and when necessary. Stepwell users collaborate for results, not stopping at merely communicating and coordinating for compliance.
Clearing away obstacles to collaboration between a monitor and an LEA team involve providing a monitor visibility into timely and relevant data, history, individuals engaged in the work, process, and status related to timelines in the event of a finding.
With a strong background in teaching and our firsthand experience working with state monitoring agencies, the strengths of the Stepwell team have given us a unique perspective on how to build our platform. Having dealt with many of the struggles of IDEA monitoring ourselves, we have built a platform that will solve the headaches of day-to-day compliance work and also get at the root causes of these issues to get impactful results.
Our company, Red Cedar Solutions Group, has extensive expertise in building educational support systems. Our past experiences in building data systems for the Michigan Department of Education and developing our own apps for educational improvement have guided us in our creation of Stepwell. Stepwell is the culmination of these efforts and our team is confident that it will bring visibility and improved results to special education.
Millions of dedicated teachers and administrators work each day to serve the nation’s students, to provide them with an education that will prepare them for life after graduation. For students with disabilities, this undertaking requires significant additional effort.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) enacted specific rules and regulations to ensure that schools across the nation provide their special education students with the tailored education they need to achieve success. The act has helped millions of children with learning, visual, hearing and other disabilities. However, implementation and compliance can get complicated.
Between IDEA Part B, for individuals ages 3–21, and Part C, for children from birth through 2 years old, there are 28 indicators that states and local schools are required to meet that vary in goals and performance targets. Achieving compliance with these indicators involves a myriad of reports, responsibilities, deadline-based actions, documentation and proof.
Stepwell is a web-based platform to organize the responsibilities of state and local education agencies, to compile and display data and to monitor corrective action planning, execution and approvals. With only a browser and login credentials, Stepwell facilitates special educators, school administrators and state administrators understanding and managing the complicated corrective action process. It drives continuous improvement in special education with automated best practices and on-demand access to the right data. Based on seven automated monitoring steps, Stepwell provides educators with more time to focus on what’s most important: students, and their right to an education.
Yes – Stepwell is able to be customized to include a multitude of modules and a fletch full of features.
Yes! Stepwell meets or exceeds ADA standards.
A house is only as good as the materials used to build it. The same goes for software; its strength and reliability derive from the technology and processes used to develop it.
Stepwell is built with the Microsoft stack. This means that it benefits from the use of standards-based technologies like the .NET framework, IIS, AJAX, REST, HTML5, and SQL Server. In addition, it runs in the Microsoft cloud (Azure) which means it is scalable, secure, and more cost-effective for its users. All of this equates to a more direct path to dramatic increases in productivity, return on investment, and user satisfaction.
Stepwell uses the most up-to-date security and encryption methods to keep data in the right hands.