Press Releases

Loudoun County Public Schools Chooses ENCORE! to Manage Programs for Special Populations

District to Implement Program from Spectrum K12 School Solutions to Manage IEPs, Decrease Paperwork Burden, and Allow Teachers to Spend More Time Providing Special Services and Interventions

TOWSON, Md. – April 24, 2006 – One of the nation’s fast growing districts, Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in Loudoun County, Va., has selected Spectrum K12 School Solutions Inc. to provide a comprehensive, Web-based solution for managing programs for special populations. LCPS will implement Spectrum K12’s ENCORE!® program to manage data and individualized education plans (IEPs) for students receiving special services or interventions, including special education, Section 504 and English as a Second Language (ESL) students.

“We had an in-house solution that we’d been using for a number of years but it was very cumbersome and time-consuming,” said Mary Kearney, director of special education for LCPS. “We asked our stakeholders to look at a number of products and compare the options available. It was their consensus that Spectrum K12 had all the features we needed in one product, rather than having to pick and choose pieces from other companies’ products.”

The ENCORE! suite of products serves districts with enrollments of 250 to over 250,000 students. Designed specifically for the K-12 education market, ENCORE! serves as a foundation for managing all phases of the IEP process for special populations. ENCORE! is a software solution that reduces the time required to plan and track student achievement while increasing the completeness, accuracy and accessibility of program information. As a result, educators can spend less time on paperwork and more time in the classroom focusing on improving student learning and performance.

“One aspect we particularly like about ENCORE! is that it is user friendly. Our district is growing so rapidly. We need a solution that will allow us to track and manage student data across the district in a very concise way,” said Kearney. “We also want to make certain that our special education process is in compliance. ENCORE!’s built-in compliance checks prompt the user when something isn’t compliant so it can be corrected. With ENCORE!, we can also build prompts into the system to meet the way we conduct the special education process in our district, unlike off-the-shelf products that may or may not be able to be customized. That was another key feature provided by Spectrum K12.”

About Loudoun County Public Schools

Loudoun County Public Schools enrolls more than 47,000 students in 68 school facilities. Located 25 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., LCPS is annually ranked in the top 10 of 140 public school systems in Virginia, according to student achievement test results.

About Spectrum K12 School Solutions

Based in Towson, Md., Spectrum K12 School Solutions Inc. helps school districts more effectively manage the individualized learning process for all students receiving special services or interventions. Spectrum K12 works collaboratively with districts of all sizes to deliver scalable, easy-to-use software solutions that lift the burden of paperwork from education professionals so they can focus on the most important part of their work: educating children and improving student achievement.