[school-discuss] Web-based IEP application

[Ken Russell <krussell@esd189.org>]

Hello Schoolforge people,

Our organization (Northwest ESD #189 in Washington state, USA), and several 
school districts within our service region, are beginning a project to 
develop a Web-based IEP application.  The "IEP" (Independent Education 
Program) is a U.S. federally mandated (although state implemented) set of 
policies for special education students. Our goal is to have this 
application ready to put in production use by September.

This project was initiated by a school district contacting our agency about 
the possibility of developing the application.  We searched the net for an 
existing program that managed IEPs.  There are several commercial software 
products available on the market for IEPs. Not surprisingly, they are 
remarkably expensive.  We where not able to find any Open Source 
applications that would fulfill this need.

The application would probably be appropriate to any state educational 
agency in the U.S., although the surface features might need to be adapted 
for the peculiarities of specific state implementations(for example, 
different terms used for the same data, interfacing with existing state 
databases, etc.).

We have just started working on the basic design of the application and 
specifying what it will do, we have not started coding.  So far the basic 
functions of the application will consist of a database to store the data, 
a web interface for completing the forms, and several reports that will be 
generated from the data.  We plan to develop the application using PHP, and 
Mysql as our platform.

We would like to hear from you if you know of other educational 
institutions that might be interested in this kind of application, or if 
you know of any existing projects with a similar purpose. We are also 
looking for funding sources for this application (grants, donations, etc.) 
that will help pay for programming and design time.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact us:

Ken Russell, Web Applications Designer, krussell@esd189.org
Chris Francy, Web Applications Engineer, cfrancy@esd189.org
Information Systems Support Center
Northwest Educational Services District
Mount Vernon, WA 98273
360.416.3490