Polaris is designed to help you write meaningful, data-driven Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). With seamless integration with other Everway tools, it empowers all members of your team to collaborate in one online solution.
Polaris enables districts to ensure compliance throughout the IEP process, while increasing teacher satisfaction and driving positive student outcomes.
Here’s how a school in Davidson County, North Carolina used Polaris to write better IEPs and improve their overall IEP process.
Davidson County Schools has 36 schools. Stoner-Thomas School has 96 students with special educational needs.
Background to Davidson County Schools
Davidson County Schools are in the Piedmont area of North Carolina near Winston-Salem. Stoner-Thomas School, one of 36 schools in Davidson County, specifically serves students with special educational needs. It currently has 96 students, ages five through 22.
Stoner-Thomas School was approved by the state of North Carolina to participate in the North Carolina Alternative Schools’ Accountability Model (ASAM), meaning additional accountability information is reported to the state as required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Serving unique learners comes with its own distinct challenges, and Stoner-Thomas School works hard to ensure they meet the needs of each student as well as their teachers. As a school that serves only students with special educational needs, IEPs are the center of their collaborative culture and process.
The biggest obstacle and risk to compliance were inconsistencies with goal writing.”
Before Polaris
Planning, writing, executing, and monitoring progress on IEPs was laborious and time-consuming at Stoner-Thomas School. Teachers needed a tool that would support them in writing IEPs that contained consistent, measurable goals based on student data and state learning standards. Stoner‑Thomas needed a comprehensive IEP solution to maintain and achieve compliance, and improve teacher satisfaction.
Maintain and achieve compliance
Rachael Cusick, Compliance Case Manager at Stoner-Thomas, was looking for a solution that ensured IEP goals were based on student performance data. In addition, it was essential these were SMART goals to ensure data was easy to collect. The goals also needed to be based on observable, measurable criteria.
“The biggest obstacle and risk to compliance were inconsistencies with goal writing,” said Rachael. Collaboration prior to the IEP meeting – which included all members of the IEP team, especially families – was also crucial.
Improve teacher satisfaction
“Special education teachers are busy and consistently receiving increased roles and responsibilities in our school,” acknowledged Rachael. Retaining teachers starts with supporting them and ensuring their satisfaction in the classroom by guaranteeing they have the time to teach rather than focusing on the abundant paperwork.
Polaris ensures our goals are data‑based and SMART. It allows for genuine collaboration prior to the IEP meeting that includes all team members, including parents.”
Why Stoner-Thomas chose Polaris
Stoner-Thomas was already using other Everway solutions in their classrooms. They used Unique Learning System (ULS) as the primary curriculum for learners with moderate to severe educational needs. They also used News2you to provide meaningful connections between their students and the outside world; L3 Skills to promote lifelong learning with academic and skill‑building games, and Symbolstix Prime to assist with communication, engagement, and expression.
Rachael explained: “[Everway] solutions allow our teachers to work smarter, not harder.” After careful review and evaluation, Polaris was added to support the school’s IEP process.
Polaris provided Stoner-Thomas with a solution for writing collaborative and compliant student plans. Teachers and service providers completed professional learning – Smart Start for Polaris and Polaris Essentials – prior to school-wide implementation, ensuring they were prepared and comfortable with the solution.
Polaris provided:
- Data syncs with ULS for seamless integration of data to support IEP writing and progress monitoring
- Data collection tools that integrate with already established curriculum and routines
- Standards-aligned goals based on all 50 states’ extended standards
- Guidance to ensure all goals were SMART, observable, and unique to each student
- A collaborative space for the whole IEP team, including families
Collaborative and efficient
“Polaris allows data collection and analysis to happen naturally in our routines,” said Rachael. Regarding compliance, she states: “Polaris ensures our goals are data-based and SMART. It allows for genuine collaboration prior to the IEP meeting that includes all team members, including parents.”
Teacher satisfaction has also increased since using Polaris at Stoner-Thomas. Rachael said: “Our teachers really love the collaborative data collection component [of Polaris], and it saves them time during data collection, specifically when writing present-level statements for IEPs.”
The partnership between Stoner-Thomas and Everway continues to strengthen and has helped the school maintain and achieve compliance while providing a much-needed boost to teacher satisfaction.
