To try and sum up a special education instructor’s job using the word “teacher” is like using the word “leader” to describe the job of the president of the United States. Although teaching may be the main task within their day-to-day routine, the truth is, there’s so much more that goes into being a special education instructor. Not to mention, being an effective and compliant special education instructor requires a significant amount of data collection and monitoring. Each student learns at their own pace, so it’s imperative that instructors are tracking each student’s individual progress and tailoring their lessons accordingly.

The Problem

According to Jerry Webster, author of  Data Collection – The Underpinning of Progress Monitoring (About.com Guide), effective data collection requires assessing the student’s success on individual items in his or her goals on a regular basis, usually at least once a week. The article goes on to explain that it is the responsibility of each special education teacher to create data sheets and manually record each student’s progress on individual goals, including the number of correct responses as a percent of total responses.
To enhance this process some districts require teachers to record each student’s progress on computer spreadsheets, which are made available to key personnel. Failure to keep good data records makes both the teacher and the district vulnerable to due process. In a time of belt tightening and budget cuts, methods of progress monitoring are being closely examined. This labor intensive procedure is being rapidly replaced with more effective technology-based progress monitoring.

A Cost Effective Solution

Conover Online can save your district thousands of dollars each year. Conover Online is a new administration and data tracking system for transition assessments, social/emotional assessments and development, and life skills assessment and development. All three of these programs run under one common management system.

Here’s how the system works:

  • Select a program track – Functional Skills System
  • Enroll a learner into the management system
  • Administers pre-assessment
  • Assigns skill building activities based upon pre-assessment results
  • Delivers skill building
  • Tracks learner progress
  • Administers post-assessment
  • Provides reports
  • Connects to other data tracking systems such as electronic IEPs

With Conover Online, the management system takes care of all of the data tracking, so special education instructors can focus their time and attention on what they do best – teaching. All of the advantages of this new technology are now available at a fraction of the cost of the old progress monitoring system. No more manually plugging data into spreadsheets. No more time-intensive reports to create. Conover Online can handle all of that for you!