Scottsbluff Public Schools Strengthens Instructional Practice in Special Ed

Our partnership with Goalbook goes beyond the purchasing of a tool. It really is an investment in our staff and ultimately our students.”

Dr. Wendy Kemling-Horner, Executive Director of Student Services

Scottsbluff Public Schools in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, serves over 3,400 students. Like many special education departments, the district’s IEPs checked the required boxes, but didn’t always capture the full picture of a student’s needs, strengths, and progress. Special educators met compliance standards but lacked the instructional practice to also tell each student’s whole story in the IEP. What they needed was a way to bring baseline data, standards, and instructional next steps together in one coherent document. 

“When you only focus on what’s right or wrong, students aren’t going to grow because you can only see things inside a box,” said Dr. Wendy Kemling-Horner, Executive Director of Student Services. “However, when you blend the compliance lens with the instructional roadmap lens, you can then think globally about a student.”

Gaps in Instructional Practice

Scottsbluff’s educators worked hard to identify what each student needed, but that effort didn’t always make it fully into an IEP. Present level statements were often minimal, and impact statements tended to be vague and formulaic. Connecting a student’s present levels, goals, and specially designed instruction into one cohesive document that also told the student’s story was a skill few educators had been explicitly taught. 

“We wanted every IEP to tell a more complete story about the student — how their disability impacts their involvement and progress in the general education curriculum and what supports they need to be successful,” said Wendy. 

Compounding the challenge was time. Teachers felt overwhelmed and pulled between classroom and school site duties (recess supervision, bus duty) and the administrative demands of writing an IEP that met every student’s individual needs. To ease this burden and build teacher capacity, Scottsbluff Public Schools partnered with Goalbook.

Implementing Goalbook Toolkit

Goalbook Toolkit is a holistic solution that builds educator capacity to develop cohesive, high-quality IEPs and implement them with more effective specially designed instruction. Rather than functioning as a one-time training, Goalbook Toolkit is designed to work alongside teachers continuously by guiding their thinking in the moment, on the actual IEPs they’re writing, not just during scheduled professional development.

Knowing that sustainable change requires dedicated time, Wendy prioritized ongoing professional development: “You can’t improve practice with your staff if you don’t take time with them,” she said.

Scottsbluff already had five PD days built into its school year. This was dedicated time when special educators across schools and grade levels could collaborate, examine real IEPs, and support one another alongside district leadership. Over time, Wendy began weaving Goalbook Toolkit into each of them. 

When teachers draft IEPs, Goalbook Toolkit keeps them firmly in the driver’s seat by guiding them to pull in daily classroom observations, assessment data, and research specific to a student’s disability — directing them to think more deeply about the whole student. This ongoing support honors teachers’ existing knowledge and experience while amplifying it through research-based strategies. 

“When you dive deeper, you get better present levels of performance,” said Wendy. “This also gives you a much broader picture of a student. The questions and built-in supports in Goalbook Toolkit are the ones that help our students be able to shine in their strengths. They also help us see what the next steps are for the areas we need to focus on.”

Outcomes: Cohesive Plans and Empowered Educators

In a post-implementation survey, Scottsbluff educators reported measurable gains in the exact instructional skills the district set out to strengthen — including a 19% increase in readiness to write standards-aligned goals, a 17% increase in writing present levels that capture real student needs and strengths, and a 10% gain in developing instruction aligned to those goals. The effects of that shift showed up across every level of the district: 

• Shift to Cohesive, Student-Centered IEPs: Educators no longer see an IEP as isolated compliance components or checked boxes. As Wendy explained, “Teachers are no longer just completing a compliance document—they’re creating meaningful, student-centered plans that connect data, grade-level standards, instruction, and progress monitoring.”

• Instruction Connected to Data: Before partnering with Goalbook, specially designed instruction was often disconnected from the goals meant to guide it. Now, as Wendy put it, that connection is explicit at every step: “We know where we are, and we know where we want to go, and we have the tools to make sure that we’re getting there. That’s a piece that we weren’t as strong in before implementing Goalbook Toolkit.”

• Consistent, Cross-District Collaboration: Incorporating Goalbook Toolkit into districtwide trainings created alignment across buildings. Educators across grade levels learn directly from one another, sharing how they leverage Goalbook Toolkit to improve their daily practice. 

• Leveled-Up Leadership Support: Rather than spending limited time coaching teachers to manually draft individual IEP sections, district leaders now point educators to Goalbook Toolkit as job-embedded PD. This frees leadership to maximize their time having deeper, student-focused coaching conversations.

Educators across the district describe feeling genuine pride and confidence in their work again. Wendy recalled a 15-year veteran who reached out specifically to have leadership read an IEP she had written. She was proud not just because it was compliant, but because it truly painted an authentic picture of the student and provided a clear roadmap for instruction. That kind of pride wasn’t limited to one teacher. In the post-implementation survey, educators districtwide reported similar gains in writing present levels, building goals, and designing instruction. 

Ultimately, partnering with Goalbook has empowered Scottsbluff special educators to write IEPs that are both compliant and tell the full story of a student.