Almost 3 years have passed since President Bush released the results of the commission he appointed to study special education in this country. Two striking findings, although not unknown to those in the field, were the crisis of retention of special education teachers and the need to reduce paperwork.

The retention of special education staff is a complex issue, but is highly related to the excessive amount of time spent completing required paperwork in order to comply with state and federal laws. Teachers reported that more time was being spent on paperwork while less time was being spent teaching students. The catch 22 is that to be compliant in one-way results in being non-compliant in a more harmful way, i.e., less time involved in direct instruction.

As a seasoned special education administrator, my primary concern was to provide a support system to my teaching staff so that students with Individual Educational Plans received the highest level of direct teaching. I turned to technology and, in particular, software that allowed easy monitoring of compliance issues and provided teachers with a friendly tool to reduce paperwork.

A successful SPED Administrator must be able to take a snapshot of the various programs, services and compliance-related issues at any given time. With the use of an integrated database system that allows teachers to input educational plans, log parent contact information, log service contact with students, just to name a few features, more time can be spent in direct instruction of special needs students. Such an integrated system will increase effectiveness by giving teachers more efficient ways to monitor progress with goals and objectives and thus improve accountability. Accountability is one of the primary concerns voiced by parents and emphasized in President Bush's "No Child Left Behind." Thus, as the former assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, Robert Pasternack, Ph.D, testified before the U.S. Senate, "we must change from a 'culture of process' to a culture of results." There is little evidence that the focus on compliance by state special education departments does not lead to an increase in student performance.

As SPED Administrators, we must enable our teachers to perform their primary responsibility of teaching while ensuring the rights of children and families. We must realize that powerful tools exist to provide this support to teachers in the form of technology. We must make technology available and provide ongoing training and supervision to teachers so that our students won’t be left behind.