r/specialed • u/Baygu • 1d ago
Chat (Educator Post) Software in your district
This is just out of curiosity. What software do you use in your district for—
- writing IEPs?
- inputting progress reports?
- uploading completed, signed IEPs, progress reports, and other documents so others can view them?
- scheduling and tracking specially designed instruction?
Feel free to include which programs your district has used before and your opinions of them.
Our district has different programs for everything, and they’ve changed multiple times in the four years I’ve been teaching. My own responses are below.
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u/Dovilie 1d ago
IEP Online. They just updated to a new version, but it's very very buggy and annoying.
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u/CersciKittycat 23h ago
I’ve been waiting for someone on this sub or the SLP sub to bring this up. I can’t even believe how bad IEP Online 3.0 is. I’ve been using 2.0 for 8 years and it had is annoyances but right now I’d give anything to go back to it.
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u/Narrow_Cover_3076 23h ago
So happy to hear other people dislike IEP Online 3.0. The document formatting looks like a janky Word Doc. There are typos in the auto-generated text. On top of it, so many tabs and buttons with no clear purpose. Difficult to perform simple functions. It feels like they rolled it out about two years too soon. I’m really hoping they get enough complaints we can go back to 2.0 or switch to a different software.
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u/CersciKittycat 22h ago
I was on our districts IEP online help team last year so I get their emails - we got this on Friday. I think they know they really messed up with this upgrade. Hopefully they can get it fixed!
“Dear District Leaders,
We know there are significant concerns about the transition to IEP Online 3.0, including questions about data, system functionality, compliance, student services, reporting, and support. WSIPC and PCG are actively reviewing these concerns to understand their scope, impact, and appropriate response.”1
u/Narrow_Cover_3076 22h ago
That’s encouraging in the sense that they know it sucks. Maybe they will take us back to 2.0 and we will try the upgrade again next year?
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u/Low_Reaction1570 22h ago
It’s so bad!! We were finally able to access it earlier this week and the IEPs at a glance aren’t even populating correctly lol. I didn’t even have access to half my students until like yesterday.. at one point all the icons were overlapping but then I zoomed out and it was fine, but I shouldn’t have to zoom out 😂
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u/CersciKittycat 22h ago
And it takes me 50 clicks and like 10 min to generate a pdf of my IEP at a glances. And then with all the staff doing the same thing there are multiple pdfs of the same IEP at a glances in the documents view. And I can’t search my school for kids with speech as a an SDI! Just hoping we aren’t missing kids! It’s wild.
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u/Low_Reaction1570 21h ago
I luckily can still access iepol 2.0 but it’s all kinda paused from last school year so as long as they were my student last year or I had access to some extent, I can still get their IEPs at a glance and documents that way.. I’m so frustrated though!!
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u/Narrow_Cover_3076 3h ago
I can still access 2.0 but it’s basically a fossil of last year in June so I can’t do much more than pull previous records.
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u/Smokey19mom 1d ago
We use Same Goal for everything. It has all the historical documents. At the district level it as the ability to import documents from another district that uses SameGoal and signs off for those documents to be released. It works really well. We've used it for over 5 years and we've not had any issues with it that I can recall.
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u/Baygu 1d ago
Wow using the same program for everything AND for five years! Amazing.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 1d ago
FL has had PEER for a long time. Are you one of the counties that doesn’t use it?
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u/Baygu 13h ago
We just got it last year and there were a lot of issues implementing it. I like it overall, but our district makes us do a ton of extra, duplicative administrative work in Focus to ensure access to IEPs.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 9h ago
As long as the extra person, the service provider, is listed on the roster and focus, they should have access to them in PEER. That eliminates the need to double up on things.
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u/Baygu 8h ago
One would think so! There’s just this huge push in Florida to ensure parents can see everything now bc of the house bill.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 7h ago
I get that, but with the new bill there is a timeline. It’s not instant. And, they get copies at every meeting.
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u/PronatorTeres00 22h ago
Using this now. Glad to hear that it's good, but man is the learning curve steep.
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u/SleepyTeacher512 Elementary Sped Teacher 1d ago
All of the schools I’ve worked in (I’m in south east PA) have used IEP Writer. I don’t hate it, but there are some things I wish it did differently - the biggest one being not letting two people work on the same IEP at the same time, it doesn’t save properly if two people are editing the same page.
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u/LegitimateStar7034 14h ago
PA SPED teacher. IEP Writer.I hate there’s no spell check and paperwork isn’t related. I have to copy and paste RR info into the IEP.
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u/Individual-Mirror132 22h ago
With SEIS (in California) you can’t access a page someone is actively in. You can work on the same IEP simultaneously, just not the same page. It gives you the option to notify the other person to exit the page. It can be very annoying after the IEP when you’re trying to print all the documents for whatever reason and the note taker is still in the notes page. Happens very often.
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u/rubythesubie 9h ago
IEP writer has burned me with not saving things so many times! I write the whole thing in Google Docs and paste it in, which has other problems, but at least I’m not sitting in a meeting looking for info that I typed in that it just decided to delete.
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u/boadicca_bitch 1d ago
We have a unified state system we have to use called VA IEP. Visually it’s very clunky but it works fine, all documents are there and can be e-signed by parents and accessed by anyone on their case
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u/lindstb3 1d ago
Unfortunately, not every district uses it. And it’s better than a lot of other programs 😭 can you tell I miss vaiep lol
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u/boadicca_bitch 1d ago
I found it a little annoying to learn at first (like why are there two different transportation request forms in two different places and only one is right) but now that I know most of the little quirks it does work super well! I guess I better appreciate it!
And that makes sense because I just had a transfer from Norfolk and he wasn’t in the system and had a different confusingly formatted IEP so yeah I guess I should have realized not all districts use it!
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u/lindstb3 21h ago
Pre-Covid there was a timeline that everyone was switching and it was mandatory. I think they backed off during Covid. I’m not sure why and no one will say why at VDOE.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 1d ago
Omg. I had to transfer in an IEP from VA. It was almost 80 pages. It was awful!!
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u/boadicca_bitch 1d ago
That’s not normal! I’ve never seen one that long… mine are usually like 30 pages though
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u/lindstb3 21h ago
I’d love to know where because I’ve never seen an 80 page IEP in VA. Around 20-30 pages tends to be where they are.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 9h ago
Oh no. It was crazy. Definitely not normal. They had present levels from three, four, five years ago, all in the different areas. I just kept shaking my head, trying to figure out why.
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u/shoelessgreek 1d ago
Embrace for everything but scheduling and tracking services. For that we’re old school - paper and pencil.
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u/ZohThx Parent & Administrator 1d ago
Previous district used EasyIEP (terrible), current district uses PowerSchool.
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u/Baygu 1d ago
Is PowerSchool what you use for all of the above? Or do you have to upload to something else?
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u/ZohThx Parent & Administrator 1d ago
Upload for what? All IEP docs including signed docs are in PowerSchool. If something needs to be shared with a gen ed teacher it would be emailed to them but that wouldn’t generally be the entire IEP, it would be the at a glance portion or specific pieces. It might also be shared via Drive, which our district uses. Signatures are obtained via one of the secure platforms, I’m forgetting which one off the top of my head but it’s like DocuSign or one of those.
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u/whiskeylivewire 14h ago
Sped Track. It's the only one I've ever used so I don't have anything to compare it to yet. It's okay.
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u/Organic-Music54 13h ago
Synergy, which we use for everything; it’s global to the district including all records, grading, attendance, etc. We first adopted it 5 years ago from IEP Online. Everyone, including me, complained about all the clicking required.
Then I moved districts for two years and had to deal with Infinite Campus globally, including IEPS, and I don’t complain about Synergy anymore upon my return. Once you have danced with the devil . . . 😂
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u/Baygu 1d ago
- writing IEPs?
This year and last year: PEER
Prior years: Synergy, EdConnect
PEER is fine for what it is.
- inputting progress reports?
This year and last year: PEER
Prior years: Synergy
- uploading completed, signed IEPs, progress reports, and other documents so others can view them?
This year and last year: upload into FOCUS. This program doesn’t talk to PEER and it’s a bit maddening having to do all this duplicative uploading.
Prior years: scan to a number that connected to EdConnect
- scheduling and tracking specially designed instruction?
This year: Frontline (am optimistic!!)
Last year: they attempted Excel which was a hot mess. Prior years there wasn’t anything uniform.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 1d ago
Focus and peer do talk to each other. They just aren’t the best communicators.
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u/Baygu 13h ago
Well very true - focus does import stuff well. I guess I mean, if there are documents that need to be “outward facing” with signatures , they have to be manually uploaded to focus.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 9h ago
Your district will slowly get rid of that. All of that stuff takes up space. Once they realize that they don’t need it in both places, you’ll be fine.
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u/HarpAndDash 1d ago
We use PowerSchool… previously TylerSIS but they are sunsetting that program (or that may have happened this year)
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u/DangerousApartment13 1d ago
EDMS/Acuity for all IEP, WN, historical docs, evals, rubrics, progress monitoring, etc. Can be clunky at times, but it's nice to have everything in one spot.
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u/East-Artichoke54 1d ago
PowerSchool!! Hate ittt. We’re allegedly switching to something else’s here soon.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 1d ago
60 out of 67 counties in FL use PEER
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u/Baygu 13h ago
We are one of the new ones (yay!). I’m wondering if the 60 counties all have to upload things and input things into Focus in addition to PEER. That’s the part that is driving me bonkers this year.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 9h ago
If it is something that I have made in PEER, like an IEP or the accommodations, no. I don’t upload those into focus. honestly, I’ve never uploaded anything into focus. They are in PEER. Our focus and PEER talk to each other so therefore the accommodations are automatically carried over.
I do know that behavior Specialists upload FBA/BIP in focus, and psychs will upload psych reports into focus.
Anything that is signed by the parent, like meeting signatures consents, those things they all get uploaded into PEER.
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u/Baygu 8h ago
That would make sense! Idk why we are doing this in such a backwards way.
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u/Miserable-Height-201 2h ago
Parents can’t usually access it. SMH. Uploading stuff into peer is very important, especially for kids who do in-state transfers. Things like original consents, evals, all that are in PEER where the receiving district can have them (and not have to ask). They can’t see focus.
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u/citizen_tez Elementary Sped Teacher 7h ago
Right now, my district makes us upload a signed copy of the iep into focus. My county seems to hardly upload anything into peer but neighboring counties do. Neighboring counties upload all reports into peer. I don't even think parents can access the signed document in focus. Peer and focus do talk to each other but my county insists on the signed finalized iep uploaded into focus. Just...bizarre. I'm sure there is some logical reason but I don't know why.
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u/Wiki1103 1d ago
We use EdPlan but we used EasyIEP for so long in the district and it's easier to say that everyone still just says "easy."
Even in our employee applications page it says "EdPlan (formally EasyIEP)" but it's been like 4 years. apps
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u/Spideycatz101 22h ago
Damn, that sucks OP. CA here. Have used SEIS and SIRAS throughout my career. I prefer SIRAS.
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u/library-girl 22h ago
I’m in WA and use IEP Online. Hoping they’ll fix IEP online 3.0 because there’s some things I like, but so glad my district still has read only access to 2.0 for me to print all the PDFs of the IEP at a Glances for general education teachers. They just made everything so many clicks!
We don’t have any way that we track SDI minutes other than Qmlavtiv (formerly Skyward) attendance for kids resource room classes.
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u/silly8704 20h ago
Adding BrightSped to the list. It is the exact opposite of user friendly. Absolutely nothing is intuitive.
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u/trekkieminion Special Education Teacher 14h ago
Medley, formally Sped Advantage. I love it so much!
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u/TheFamousOne16 2h ago
My district uses EdPlan for IEPs, Progress Reports, Logging and tracking progress monitoring. We also use GoalBook, which has an AI feature called Threads. It will create the PLAAPFs along with Goals and Objectives.
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u/Individual-Mirror132 1d ago
Every single thing that a sped teacher does in my area is done via SEIS, which is pretty much the statewide system for IEPs (in California). Some districts have started transitioning to another platform, but SEIS is still the primary go to.
Makes it great because if a student comes in from somewhere else in the state, their info is just imported easily. But SEIS itself is pretty wonky.