Saginaw ISD Partners with Goalbook to Restore Capacity Countywide

Saginaw Intermediate School District (ISD) functions as an Educational Service Agency (ESA) in Saginaw County, Michigan, serving 12 local school districts and five public school academies. 

Special educators across Saginaw County struggled to connect data-driven present levels to skills-based, measurable goals — often defaulting instead to district or state test scores, like NWEA or M-STEP, as both the baseline and the target, rather than pinpointing each student’s individual skills deficits. Without a clear picture of what a student actually needed, goals were vague enough that no one could reliably tell whether a student was making progress.

Educators across the county turned to Saginaw ISD’s central team for manual, one-on-one goal-writing support, a demand that only strained an already-thin staff further. 

Trish Duran, Supervisor of Special Education at Saginaw ISD, recalled the pattern she saw repeated across the county: “Teachers were constantly coming to us asking, ‘Can you just give us a SMART goal guide?’”

Her technical assistance (TA) monitoring cycles confirmed what she was hearing on the ground: present levels and goals were consistently flagged as the weakest areas of IEP quality across the county. 

It became clear that teachers needed job-embedded support and real-time coaching to write meaningful, skills-based goals — not a one-time training session, but ongoing capacity-building woven into their daily practice. 

Barriers to County-Wide Alignment

A major driver behind these instructional practice gaps was the region’s constant turnover of new and transient special education teachers, many without foundational training and instructional practice skills in writing high-quality, compliant IEPs. 

David Krantz, Executive Director of Special Education, described the strain this put on his team:

“We have so many new or transient people in the county — when they start with us, or if they’re struggling, we only have so much human capital to provide, and that gets spread out and burnt out … They were calling a mentor, or calling Trish, to get basic guidance.”

Recognizing that one-on-one coaching alone couldn’t scale across dozens of school buildings, Saginaw ISD leaders sought a systemic resource that could build sustainable teacher self-efficacy and restore clarity to the IEP process.

Partnering with Goalbook

What Saginaw ISD needed was a solution that could do double duty: build individual educators’ skill in writing cohesive, high-quality IEPs, while also giving David and Trish’s small central team a way to extend their reach without adding headcount. Goalbook Toolkit fit both needs.

As a research-based solution, Goalbook Toolkit pairs job-embedded technology with ongoing, customized professional development, giving educators a consistent framework for the Golden Thread of Special Education: the coherence between a student’s present levels, goals, and the specially designed instruction, while amplifying ISD leadership in a scalable way. 

Trish admitted she had her own hesitation going in. Supporting districts with IEP development was her job — so would a tool that did some of that job for her make her role redundant? It didn’t. Instead, Goalbook Toolkit gave her something to build a sustained, countywide initiative around, rather than a one-year pilot that quietly faded. 

Rather than launching a countywide rollout all at once — another mandate for an already-stretched staff to absorb — Trish moved deliberately. The first licenses went to ancillary staff since, as she put it, “we know that they write a lot of the IEPs themselves.”

A Sustainable Model for Scaled Professional Learning

Trish Duran worked closely with Goalbook Customer Success Manager Rachel to keep the county cohort connected. What began in year one as monthly virtual check-ins shifted to quarterly sessions as the partnership matured — short, focused meetings built around a survey Trish sends beforehand.

By offering these targeted quarterly sessions, Saginaw ISD provided continuous professional development while remaining readily available for coaching. Trish routinely sent surveys before meetings to gather feedback on Goalbook Toolkit usage, answer pressing questions, and celebrate teacher success. 

Rachel and Trish then co-designed PD sessions based on that feedback, validating teacher voices and keeping learning directly relevant to classroom needs. The model’s staying power showed up in small moments. When scheduling got tight at the end of a recent school year, Trish considered canceling the final quarterly check-in. The cohort said no. “I think that it was so well thought out,” Rachel reflected. “They were busy, but they still wanted to have that connection point.”

“This connection, and making sure we’re still connected as a cohort and as a group, has made the success of this story so great,” added Trish.

Restoring Capacity and Building Self-Efficacy

Goalbook Toolkit acts as job-embedded professional development, giving educators a clearer, hands-on understanding of how present levels, goals, and instruction connect.

That shift has expanded Trish’s administrative capacity. Instead of fielding basic goal-writing questions one-on-one across dozens of buildings, she now monitors usage reports and provides targeted coaching to staff who need it most. It’s a different kind of support: less about correcting compliance gaps after the fact, more about building teachers’ capacity from the start. 

The buy-in has become largely self-sustaining. David Krantz has watched it spread county-wide without prompting from his team: “Goalbook has really established themselves as an important piece in a lot of people’s development … Whether they hear about it at a MAASE conference or from their peers, we’ve had a number of times when it’s not even us reaching out. That’s really generated a lot of interest across the county.”

Outcomes of Implementing Goalbook Toolkit

Saginaw ISD transformed its special education programming — moving from disconnected IEPs and a high volume of compliance flags to presenting its data-driven success at the 2024 Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education (MAASE) annual conference. The positive impact of the partnership with Goalbook is felt at both the ESA and building levels.

Countywide Reach, Statewide Recognition

Partnering with Goalbook has amplified the capacity of Saginaw ISD leadership. Trish Duran streamlined PD delivery across the county, aligning communication, expectations, and instructional standards.

That work reached a wider audience at MAASE 2024, where Trish and Goalbook Customer Success Manager Rachel co-presented “Transforming Teacher Practice to Support Student Outcomes.” The session explored how technical assistance can deliver high-leverage practices that directly elevate student achievement. 

Increased Educator Efficacy and Compliance Growth

Trish’s ongoing IEP monitoring cycles tell the story in numbers. Between 2021 and 2024 technical assistance (TA) cycles, Trish’s team saw a marked drop in indicators flagged for review — goal quality issues fell by roughly half, and present levels and assessment issues dropped by roughly two-thirds. These were areas educators had identified as their biggest need at the outset of the partnership.

This quantitative progress is backed by overwhelming teacher support. Educators are writing more robust, data-driven present level statements and standards-aligned goals. In an annual survey of Saginaw ISD Goalbook Toolkit users: 

• 98% strongly agree/agree Goalbook supports their effectiveness
• 97% strongly agree/agree Goalbook supports their efficiency
• 100% strongly agree/agree Goalbook supports them in writing IEP present levels of performance statements that are data-driven.
• 100% strongly agree/agree Goalbook supports them in developing standards-aligned, measurable IEP goals.

This confidence shows up in retention, too: 98% of Saginaw ISD’s Goalbook users wanted to continue their license in May 2024. The single non-renewal was a staff departure, not dissatisfaction.

Special educators across the county report that Goalbook Toolkit has transformed their daily instructional practice:

“Goalbook has made me more conscientious about writing strong PLAAFP statements with evidence/data. It has also helped me write “SMART”er goals and objectives.”

“My students are getting targeted interventions based on specific goals and objectives. I am better able to monitor their progress or lack thereof to realign instruction and targeted skills practice.”

The numbers above tell part of the story. David Krantz draws a distinction between two goals that don’t always move together: meeting compliance standards and moving student academic outcomes. “Our compliance numbers statewide have been solid for years — where we’ve struggled is with outcomes,” he said. “What Goalbook does is go beyond compliance to best practice, evidence-based practice, and mostly outcome-based work. If our goal is to increase outcomes and compliance at the same time, Goalbook helps with that.”

A Return Worth the Investment

Amid shifting educational budgets, Saginaw ISD doesn’t treat the Goalbook partnership as a set-it-and-forget-it line item. Each spring, David and Trish review license usage together: how many licenses are active, whether they’re being used, and whether they’re being used “with fidelity and efficacy.” That annual review, David said, “generates real interest and commitment” — evidence that makes the case for renewal easier, year after year. 

David points to educators using Goalbook Toolkit every day as the real driver of renewal: “When you have advocates like Trish, and the advocates who are actually using it on the ground, it makes it easier to make the commitment.”

Saginaw’s confidence isn’t just about the tool itself — it’s about the return on the partnership with Goalbook. David is direct about how this partnership compares to other vendor relationships: 

“We’ve worked with a number of companies before, and we haven’t always gotten the return on investment. That’s not the feeling I have here. We’ve definitely gotten the return on investment, not only with the program, but with the program moving forward. So other people need to hear that. If there’s something that’s positive, we should definitely share it with each other.”

That commitment extends past Saginaw County’s borders, too. As Trish put it: “It’s not just students in Michigan — it’s students everywhere across the nation that Goalbook Toolkit can help. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. It’s something that can really benefit all educators and all learners.”

Conclusion

Saginaw ISD’s central team was stretched thin before the start of the partnership with Goalbook. Four years later, that same team, and the educators it supports across the county, are more self-sufficient.

The throughline for Saginaw ISD wasn’t a single fix. It was building a system that could scale across 12 districts and five academies, one cohort, and one check-in at a time. Trish Duran’s care in how she rolled out and sustained that system is, by David Krantz’s own account, a big part of why it worked. “We have so many things to be proud of,” David said. “I think this is a good example of the success of Goalbook in our county.”

For Trish, the work comes back to something simpler: giving teachers the tools to do right by their students. “I love being able to empower teachers to build that capacity with their students,” she said. “If I can help ease some of the load that teachers are bearing, that’s huge.”

Saginaw ISD isn’t done evolving its approach. Trish and her team continue to sharpen their focus on the Golden Thread to keep working toward stronger outcomes for students.

To Saginaw ISD, Goalbook isn’t just a vendor relationship. It’s a partnership built on communication, trust, and a shared commitment to high-quality IEPs for every student.