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About ACMontheWeb
Under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA, P.L. 105-17) of 1997, schools must provide a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) that meet the standards of the State education agency in conformity with the Individualized Education Program (IEP) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) to children with disabilities.
This sea of alphabet soup is just the beginning of a complex process of providing special education services to students. The federal Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), under the auspices of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Department of Education, is charged with monitoring states’ compliance with this Act.
As such, it has instituted a Continuous Improvement Monitoring Process (CIMP) that provides a model for states to implement a compliance monitoring process. The model includes Validation Planning, Data Collection, Improvement Planning, and pre-monitoring activities including Self-assessments. Recent changes include additional Focused Monitoring (or Continuous Improvement Focused Monitoring System [CIFMS]) for selected schools.
Leader Services, an information management firm providing technology and processing solutions to over 1,000 school districts in 6 states, has developed ACMontheWeb to assist departments of education at the state level to implement compliance monitoring solutions over the World Wide Web. During late 2003 and early 2004, we updated applications to include Focused Monitoring. Our process can accommodate multiple types of schools, including charter schools, correctional facilities, approved private schools, and early intervention.
Our process begins with a custom conversion of your state’s pre-monitoring instruments (self-assessments, file reviews) to a web-based secure data-collection site. Your schools log in to the site using standard web browsers, connecting to a secure server (either managed by your IT staff or hosted at Leader’s facilities). Schools complete data entry online and are subject to the data validation rules specified by your state requirements. Data is captured to a database while a formal report is generated for the school.
Once the pre-monitoring process is completed by the school, your staff is notified via e-mail and may log into the administrative site to review the school’s submissions. The administrative site includes both standard reports and custom reports as needed. Your staff may then begin the on-site monitoring activities. After initial onsite monitoring is completed, your staff can begin the process of developing corrective action plans through the administrative site, generating and updating plans as necessary.
Milestone corrective action plans can be viewed by the school so that it may begin the implementation process. As follow-up monitorings are completed and schools brought into compliance, outstanding items are closed on the administrative web site. When a school has corrected all deficiencies, the administrative site can generate the necessary paperwork to complete the process.
The web process eliminates the delays caused by sending paperwork back and forth to districts, associated mailing costs, printing volumes of reports, and other deficiencies of a paper-based process. Participating school districts feel more like a partner with the state department of education through use of the web-based workflow, allowing for speedier review of problems and corrective actions.
Leader has implemented this process in the state of Pennsylvania with great success. Put Leader’s 30+ years’ experience in information processing to work in creating a solution for your state.
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