Situated on the Connecticut River, Chicopee is one of the oldest communities in Western Massachusetts and home to Westover Air Reserve Base, the largest Air Force Reserve Base in the United States.
Chicopee Public Schools serves 6,255 students in Pre-K–12th grade. Students with disabilities make up about 23% of the student population. Before partnering with Goalbook, even experienced special educators were struggling with navigating the complex IEP process and had challenges writing high-quality IEP goals and tracking student progress.
The Problems Facing Chicopee Public School’s Special Education Program
The Special Education department in Chicopee Public Schools faced a couple of district-wide challenges: 1) inconsistent IEP goal writing, and 2) no district-wide approach for supporting and training new and veteran special education teachers.
Without consistent resources provided by the district, special educators were relying on internet searches or other colleagues for IEP goal development. Furthermore, there was no systematic way to track and monitor student progress.
Teachers were struggling to write IEP goals that were specific, measurable, and attainable. There were a couple of reasons for this:
- There is a lot of variation in the special educators’ level of experience. With a high turnover of special educators, Chicopee has a lot of new teachers with limited experience in the special education process.
- There was not a consistent, district-wide approach for supporting and training special educators.
With the state of Massachusetts rolling out a new IEP form and process, Director of Special Education Dr. Andrea Stolar knew the district needed a resource that would guide common expectations across school buildings to improve the IEP process and provide support and training of special educators.
Chicopee Public School Partners with Goalbook
Andrea wanted a holistic, research-based solution that would build special educator capacity to write standards-aligned IEP goals and progress monitor. She also wanted to help educators learn how to make the goals and data meaningful for the classroom and to transform their instruction.
Goalbook came highly recommended from other special education colleagues whose districts implemented Goalbook Toolkit, so in the 2022–2023 school year, Chicopee Public Schools began their partnership with Goalbook.
The district leaders collaborated with Goalbook Customer Success Manager Bethany Hickey to create a strategic plan for their implementation of Goalbook Toolkit.
From the start, Andrea had a clear vision for how the special education coordinators would support the implementation of Goalbook Toolkit. She expected them to work closely with the special education teachers to ensure effective use of Goalbook Toolkit. This approach fostered buy-in and empowered coordinators to identify educators’ needs, and work with Goalbook to address them.
Jacilyn Berriman, Special Education Coordinator, said for the initial implementation, she and Bethany “worked closely together to collaborate on the access to accounts and the professional development provided to teachers by Goalbook.”
In ongoing collaboration, Bethany develops impact reports which highlight multiple dimensions of how educators are using Goalbook Toolkit in their instructional practice. The district-level team then shares the reports with the team chairs at the school sites.
Additionally, Bethany and Andrea meet regularly throughout the year to review progress of the implementation goals, areas of strength and improvement, and how the implementation can be adapted. As part of this collaboration, they seek additional opportunities for Goalbook to offer targeted live professional development. Bethany “has been essential in providing professional development within the district, which has been extremely beneficial,” said Andrea.
As part of Goalbook’s holistic approach, Chicopee also makes the most of Goalbook’s asynchronous webinars to train any educators who were unable to attend initial live trainings early in the school year.
How Chicopee Implements Goalbook Toolkit Into Existing Systems
In the special education district-wide meetings, Andrea shares resources from Goalbook Toolkit and communicates the expectations for utilizing it. When educators need support on their written IEPs, the district team will reference Goalbook Toolkit as a coaching tool in their feedback to them.
Andrea and the district team noticed that once the teachers started using Goalbook Toolkit, they began to use it even more.
Goalbook Toolkit “is really user-friendly, and the educators feel comfortable going through the tool themselves. They can find resources they need quickly and easily,” said Jacilyn.
“[Our] teachers are choosing to use it. They want to use it,” said Andrea. “They’d be upset if we took Goalbook Toolkit away.”
Special Education Coordinator Michael McDonald said, “As staff continue to use Goalbook Toolkit and questions naturally arise, there’s a level of comfort knowing that we can reach out to Goalbook to ask for specific trainings, or how to best utilize Goalbook Toolkit in the most efficient and effective manner. The turnaround has been quick and done in a way that is teacher-friendly and staff-friendly.”
“Goalbook has been essential for us. The Customer Support team is super responsive any time we need them for user account set up,” said Jacilyn.
Impact of Implementing Goalbook Toolkit on Chicopee Public Schools
Across the district, educators are now producing IEPs that reflect Massachusetts state standards and that are truly developed for each student. The goals are not cookie-cutter; they’re individualized and measurable, and teachers are regularly collecting data from assessments. They’re also using this explicit data to better inform their specially designed instruction.
Furthermore, in a state that can be very litigious, Chicopee Public Schools is confident they can stand behind their high-quality IEPs written with support of Goalbook Toolkit. The state of Massachusetts does a tiered-focus monitoring review where they randomly choose folders and go through IEPs. Chicopee Public Schools was not cited at all after implementing Goalbook Toolkit.
“Goalbook Toolkit doesn’t just help with writing goals,” said Dr. Kim Root who is the Special Education Coordinator for related services providers. “It’s the whole piece of getting students what they need in their areas of disability. You have goals that help, but you also have data sheets for progress monitoring, and the strategies for delivering instruction.”
Chicopee Teachers Share How Goalbook Toolkit Improves Their Insrtructional Practice and Effectivness
Prior to having access to Goalbook Toolkit, educators in Chicopee would look for resources and strategies in multiple places, which took up their valuable time.
“I would use the internet and books that I had. I would try to pull resources from online or what we had in stock in school,” said Amanda M., who is an inclusion teacher at one of the elementary schools.
Monica M., who teaches assistive and practical skills, said, “I would look at the student’s old goal and try to update it and make it more of what they needed now.”
Now, however, Chicopee special educators embrace Goalbook Toolkit and embed it in their instructional practice. As a result, they are more efficient with their time and can deliver more targeted instruction.
“I use Goalbook Toolkit all the time,” said Monica. “When it’s time to do progress reports or write goals and objectives, everything is there in Goalbook Toolkit. I can modify for my students’ needs. All the activities, assessments, and data sheets are all there in one place. It has cut my time in more than half.”
Karli Z., who teaches middle school inclusion classes, shared: “Even though my students are at the same grade level, they’re at so many different levels. What I give one student is not what I’m going to give another student. Goalbook Toolkit helps me meet them where they need and bridges the gaps … I can teach them better that way.”
Educator self-efficacy has also increased as a result of implementing Goalbook Toolkit.
“I’m more confident when I’m writing my goals,” said Monica. “The goals are written nicer and sound more professional. I’m also more confident when people are reading the goals.”
Karli said, “I’ve grown as a teacher. I would struggle with the wording and writing measurable goals. Goalbook Toolkit has shown me how to write better goals with a wider variety of words. The goals are now measurable and individualized.”
Amanda, who has been teaching for eight years said, “I’ve gotten more comfortable with writing goals and objectives. Yes, I’ve been doing that for so many years, but I feel like it’s always changing. Kids are always changing, so how you write goals is always changing. Now I have a baseline to start with. And I’m getting more efficient and effective.”
Goalbook Toolkit has increased the capacity for special educators in Chicopee. The special education process is now streamlined, and there is a consistent framework for developing IEPs and delivering instruction.
Chicopee educators also report being better able to collaborate with their peers and hold students accountable for their academic growth.
Amanda shared that having Goalbook Toolkit improved the collaboration between her and the paraprofessional who worked in her classroom. Goalbook Toolkit made their collaboration “so much more effective” because they worked together to create goals in Goalbook Toolkit. The paraprofessional used the aligned data sheets to collect data. Amanda then used that data to write progress reports.
Because Karli used Goalbook Toolkit to collect student work samples and data, she was able to share a student’s specific areas of need for his social studies class. “The information and data collected with Goalbook Toolkit helped the social studies teacher know better how to modify their assessments to meet the student’s needs,” said Karli.
Key Takeaways and Impact of Goalbook Toolkit in Chicopee Public Schools
As a district, Chicopee had challenges in supporting special education teacher effectiveness district-wide. Specifically, educators struggled to write IEP goals due to a wide variance in experience. Additionally, there was no unified district-wide approach in supporting and training special educators.
Because of Andrea’s leadership and clear vision, Chicopee’s special educator coordinators are involved in the implementation of Goalbook Toolkit and are committed to supporting educators in their usage.
By embracing their partnership with Goalbook, the Special Education department of Chicopee Public Schools has addressed the challenges at the root cause by focusing on special educator capacity and efficacy.
Chicopee has seen the following results due to their implementation of Goalbook Toolkit:
- Teacher efficiency has improved, and retention of special educators has increased as well.
- Special educators report having increased confidence and effectiveness in the special education process, thus improving instructional practices.
- Chicopee was not cited in the state’s tiered-focus monitoring review of IEPs.
“Goalbook Toolkit is a tool that educators want. When they buy into it and start using it, they start endorsing it, and it becomes contagious,” said Andrea.
