About SMART

For any state education department – educating migrant children requires establishing existing eligibility in that state or a prior state, certifying that student as new or updating an existing record, and then being able to track the student’s progress through a local school system in order to receive federal allocation funds. 

The Migrant Education Program (or MEP) within a state is federally funded under Title I, Part C, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).  In order to receive these critical education dollars, states are rewarded for accuracy in being able to report  national Certificates of Eligibility (COE or eCOE) as well as student progress yearly through various school systems, as established by protocols from the U.S. Department of Education.

Some states have additional tracking requirements in order to provide supplemental support to eligible migrant children and youth that helps assure they are not penalized by differences across school curriculums, academic content, student achievement standards, or graduation requirements.  Federal goals are focused on students’ progress through American schools on paths designed to graduate them from high school, and get them prepared for that next path in pursuing vocational or post-secondary education, or simply becoming employment ready. 

Migrant education students are literally “human capital” – embraced by local schools and teachers, but for whom it rests with state departments of education to verify eligibility, certification, and progression through curriculums across multiple states, in order to obtain much-needed reimbursement. 

The ease and accuracy of our new SMART Migrant Student Tracking Software guarantees greater accuracy and the resulting improvement of any state’s “affirmation of eligibility” numbers, thereby automatically covering the cost of any SMART contract.

Once a state’s system records are imported into SMART, the scrubbing can begin! Cleaned and corrected records makes the math easy – increasing the accuracy of student records leads to more certificates approved  = better and more accurate federal allocation funds received yearly.  That means; 1) accuracy in locating incomplete or rejected records and correcting them; 2) having the ability to locate existing student records and updating them; and, 3) adding to family records. In a 6,000+ migrant student program, the average return is $1,100 per student as in the State of Colorado example.

Without that accuracy, states do not qualify or certify enough students and end up unnecessarily draining other state education funds to cover the cost of migrant students – to the detriment of the local schools and teachers working hard to serve them.

These losses should not be acceptable – SMART revolutionizes the ease of verification and tracking for any field recruiter from a regional staff or in a private vendor office. SMART guarantees field recruitment in the most remote locations without wireless access and without loss of data entry. SMART storage allows for the retention of accurate records yearly at the regional and state level that can be easily accessed and re-verified yearly to keep federal allocation $$$ coming.

Departments will notice substantive decreases in staff time (up to 40-60% initially) that was formerly devoted to updating cumbersome paper records and different system interfaces used in the maintenance of local school and state records, over what can be a 15-year period of a child’s student career.  SMART’s paperless workflow helps structure standardized MSIX and EdFacts data fields into the federally-recognized data fields and data sections found on the national standard for electronic eligibility certificates. SMART is scalable from a few small satellite offices to giant regional offices or within a large private staffing solutions company – the SMART migrant student tracking software solution monitors any staff data collection across a state.

SMART is designed for ease in the field and accuracy at the department level.

In addition to dashboard Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reports, customized managerial reports can be created individually or regionally to compare performance of staff and vendor data collection, accuracy review, and certification. No more lost federal allocation funds for inaccurately entered student records.

Additional data fields are also available in case your state needs to collect and track eligibility factors for supplemental programs such as school lunches, student counseling, ESL classes, extra tutoring, before they become impossible to track and manage.

Key Features

• Powerful web-based tracking software that brings local and regional offices together
• Easy-to-deploy mobile software in the field
• Seamless integration with multiple state and third party vendor systems
• Comprehensive record-search tool that eliminates dual and inaccurate records
• Standardized workflows are made easy with visual mouse-over assists
• Get performance and insight into field recruiter and data specialist roles
• Real time data visibility of any district at your fingertips – great for managers
• Easy student record access before and after eligibility certification is completed
• Senior level user establishes whatever data configurations are necessary for easy reporting
• Dashboard analytics facilitates real-time review by senior administrators and top management
• Greatly reduces time spent on administrative oversight – make better staffing and field deployment decisions
• Authenticated student data and staff approval analytics help support a state’s eligibility certification numbers
• Secure, tamper-proof and audit-proof record-keeping in the cloud.