Mountain Brook Schools’ Special Education Program Improves Progress Monitoring, Resulting in Increased Student Outcomes
Just outside Birmingham, Alabama, nestled below shady trees and along mountain ridges, is a small suburb of just over 22,000 people called Mountain Brook. The K–12 school district that serves the suburb’s 4,400 students is Mountain Brook Schools, a high-performing district.
In 2012, the Alabama State Department of Education gave the Mountain Brook special education program a Level One ranking, the highest possible rank, and the success has continued through the years. In 2023, Mountain Brook High School ranked as the #2 high school in Alabama, and 95% of the senior class of 2022 attended a four-year university in the fall.
Despite their history of high achievement, Mountain Brook’s special education program has still encountered challenges. In the spring of 2019, two events caused the special education program to reflect: 1) the special education director left the district, and 2) the district faced a few active parent complaints.
In response, the district asked Melissa (Missy) Brooks, Ed.D., who was the Director of Curriculum and Instruction including CTE, to step in as the Director of Special Education. Missy was familiar with federal programs and testing accountability, so Mountain Brook knew she brought the experience and knowledge to help the special education program face its challenges.
Uncovering the Challenge of Progress Monitoring and Collecting Data
To better understand the program she was now leading, Missy investigated what could be improved in the special education department.
One issue she uncovered was progress reporting. At Mountain Brook, progress reports are sent home every nine weeks. Missy asked, “What do the scores on progress reports really mean? How do we know if a student is progressing? What data shows progression?”
Few were able to answer these questions with evidence or data. Thus, Missy identified a significant problem: special educators were struggling to create progress monitoring tools and collect concrete data to explain student progress.
With this problem on her mind, she began looking for a resource to support her special educators with progress monitoring.
“Goalbook Toolkit was the answer to many of the problems I was seeing.”
Discovering a Resource to Help Face the Challenge
In the Spring of 2021, Nadia Williams, a former educator now on the District Partnerships team at Goalbook, demonstrated what Goalbook Toolkit has to offer. Missy quickly realized Goalbook Toolkit could help support the teachers with progress monitoring.
Missy liked that Goalbook Toolkit is an evidence-based solution that supports teachers in progress monitoring and guides them through the full IEP writing process of identifying data-driven present levels, developing IEP goals, and designing instruction. “Goalbook Toolkit was the answer to many of the problems I was seeing,” said Missy.
Implementing Goalbook Toolkit, the Solution
Mountain Brook piloted Goalbook Toolkit for the remainder of the 2020–21 school year. To start the pilot, Goalbook led a training for the district’s lead special education teachers. The lead teachers used Goalbook Toolkit to write goals for their spring IEPs and enjoyed how Toolkit provided tailored progress monitoring assessments.
In the following year, Missy and the Goalbook team rolled out Goalbook Toolkit to the remaining special education teachers with a strong focus on progress monitoring. To Missy, “the most important piece was to improve progress monitoring so that we could include charts, graphs, and data sheets in the IEP narrative. This way, parents could see the progress their children were making on IEP goals,” she said.
Since the district-wide rollout, Missy and the Goalbook team have continually worked closely together to identify priority areas to improve. As one way of doing this, Gerald Johnson, a former school administrator and the District and Customer Success Manager from Goalbook, has supported educators with multiple professional development sessions. Missy quickly pointed out that the sessions are not the same; rather, they deepen knowledge of Goalbook Toolkit with each training session.
“I really appreciate the responsiveness of Gerald and Nadia,” Missy said. “They’re always willing to listen and answer any questions, which is so helpful.”
Measuring the Impact of Goalbook Toolkit Usage
“I’m really proud that the teachers have embraced Goalbook Toolkit, see value in it, and are using it,” said Missy. Since embracing the use of Goalbook Toolkit, the educators and students in Mountain Brook’s special education program have seen positive benefits.
Impact on Teachers: Special educators are more confident and effective in their data collection and progress monitoring. According to Missy, the data on progress reports is “absolutely leaps and bounds from what we were doing before.”
“Accurate data is extremely important,” said Emily Beane, who has been teaching special education for four years at Mountain Brook. “It’s a lot easier to keep the data consistent and measure student growth using the resources in Goalbook Toolkit.”
Impact on Students: “We’re seeing students make progress because we’re really checking. We see when they’re not making progress and know if we need to try something different or if we need to change the goal altogether because that’s not really what they need,” Missy said. “We’ve seen kids master goals so quickly, and goals that didn’t last all year because they mastered them after a semester. We’re growing students in their deficits faster and have the data to show it.”
Olivia Pope, Mountain Brook’s Board Certified Behavior Analyst, shared that in a recent IEP team meeting, “the parent was impressed with the IEP written with the help of Goalbook Toolkit, and you can see the child has made huge gains this year. I think this student’s success goes back to having tailored, achievable goals and structured progress monitoring.”
Impact on the District: Having all special educators district-wide use Goalbook Toolkit created continuity and consistency in how data is collected and shared in IEPs and IEP meetings.
“I’m seeing clarity in communication about a child to the parent,” said Missy. “This is pervasive across the district now, which is great.”
In addition to students mastering their IEP goals faster and educators being more effective in progress monitoring and writing IEPs, Mountain Brook has also seen better compliance and less litigation. Recently, the district received a complaint which was successfully resolved because the district had accurate data as evidence.
Creating Positive Systemic Changes
Mountain Brook Schools’ special education program has seen positive systemic changes since partnering with Goalbook. These changes come from closely working with Goalbook’s team, the dedication of Mountain Brook’s implementation team, and teachers fully embracing Goalbook Toolkit.
Data collection has improved because special educators utilize Goalbook Toolkit’s ready-to-use progress monitoring resources. As a result, students are mastering their IEP goals faster. Additionally, special educators report they are more confident and efficient in their work, specifically in progress monitoring and data gathering.
“This is my 34th year in education, so I don’t get overly excited about products. But in the last few years, I’ve gotten really excited about Goalbook Toolkit,” said Missy. “It’s just wonderful.”
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