Children with disabilities are not receiving the education they need.

Wizdom Education: Special Education Planning and Management

photo: five smiling graduates in blue caps and gowns, holding diplomas in their hands

For Immediate Release
February 24, 2003

Wizdom Releases Special Education White Paper for the US Department of Education

Naperville, Illinois, February 24, 2003– Wizdom today announced immediate availability of “Special Education Wizdom” – A white paper co-authored by Dennis E. Wisnosky, B.S. Ed., M.S.E.E., M.S.M.S. and Philip J. Vitkus, M.S.Ed.

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) wanted to know about the Transition Planning Process (TPP) as part of the Individual Education Program (IEP). Key questions included: How is the process working? Can software be developed to improve the process?

Wizdom studied these issues for nearly a year using both internal staff and the services of independent consultants, educators, parents and students. Wizdom corroborates the findings of Harris Corporation and others, that children with disabilities are not currently receiving the education they will need to succeed in life – specifically transition planning is non existent for all practical purposes.

Like peeling the layers of an onion, the Wizdom process analysis methodology goes back to the very first step of the process and identifies, verifies and analyzed each step from when the child is born until the child graduated from the system. Wizdom built such a process model, which is shown above notionally and is detailed in the white paper.

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This scientific approach to studying Special Education caused Wizdom to conclude that people alone cannot successfully manage this process:

The process involves: Millions of Individuals
Tens of millions of support people
Hundreds of millions of transactions

Conflicting Regulations
High Personnel Turnover
Highly Litigious Environment

One result is that whereas the average teacher in regular education spends 10% of his or her time in administrative activity – not dealing with children directly, the SE teacher spends 30% or more. As in other segments of the US economy, the only answer is to substantially automate the SE process.

This is the only chance for outcomes to be measured as they occur. Without doing this, the process is reduced to grope and hope. The universal goal of process automation is consistency. The goal of process automation in SE is to find out what works and then to implement a system to provide outcomes for every individual that are as good as those provided by the best teachers:

A holistic approach is required involving: Process
Software
Training

Wizdom calls this approach high touch - high tech. After studying what has worked in process transformation in virtually all other industries and branches of the public sector, it is clear that “crawl-walk-run” is the most effective and efficient way to insure improvements that are accepted by the institution. Without this buy-in, change is at best ephemeral and at worst invites backlash. The result could be a situation that is worse than that which was supposed to be improved.

Wizdom completed a second contract with the US Department of Education to demonstrate software which would obey the above principles. A white paper detailing the facts shown above andn the results of the software research is available from Wizdom.

Wizdom Education, a Division of Wizdom Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of software and services to plan and manage Special Education programs. Wizdom Call or email Robin Davies (robind@wizdom.com) for additional information.

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