Antoinette Banks is a cognitive scientist on a mission, and for her, that mission starts at home.
Much of Banks’ work in tech has been fueled by her daughter, who was born in 2006 and diagnosed at with a neurodevelopmental disorder at five years old that Banks later learned was autism. Doctors told her there was a “0% probability of adult autonomy,” Banks shared with AFROTECH™.
Rather than accept that prognosis, Banks set out to build a solution for her daughter, one rooted in possibility, not limitation.
“I actually talked to a special education attorney, and he said at the time, ‘Black families don’t care enough about things like being autistic, so you might want to put her in a facility to give her the best shot,'” Banks recalled. She wanted to gain a better understanding of how the brain works, and chose to enroll in night classes at a local community college.
She eventually enrolled in a cognitive science bachelor’s program at the University of California, Davis, and while studying, Banks began to ramp up her efforts to create a family-centered solution for Individual Education Programs (IEPs). According to the U.S. Department of Education, IEPs are individualized documents created in collaboration with teachers, parents, school administrators, related services personnel, and students (if appropriate) that create learning goals and plans for students with disabilities.
Banks built a collaborative database with pattern recognition that enabled communication and collaboration among IEP team members while identifying behavioral and academic patterns. What began as receiving feedback from 20 families on her prototype scaled to conducting 200 interviews and analyzing more than 400 IEPs, the majority being from Black and brown families. Banks compared those findings with secondary datasets from the Department of Education. That deep analysis helped her identify clear patterns of what actually works for families, especially families of color.
“Those are the main families who are not getting access to college or gainful employment or even more therapeutic care,” Banks explained.
Expert IEP
This formed the foundation of Expert IEP, which formally launched in 2021. It is an AI-powered app that optimizes IEPs so families can be intentional about building a brighter future for their child, Banks explained to AFROTECH™. Now, collaboration can be done in an effective manner before meetings between families and schools.
The platform comes at a time when 77% of all IEP documents are written in an inaccessible format for families, according to forthcoming research conducted by Banks, which will be published in the American Educational Research Association Journal. Additionally, Banks shared that IEPs for Black students are penalized more in the language within written documents, in comparison to white students, who typically receive more collaborative language.
Banks also reported that those who have a paid advocate to review their IEP also have better outcomes, even greater than parents who remain active at each meeting for their child. However, paying for an advocate can be costly, with families spending on average between $750 to $14,000 annually, Banks told AFROTECH™.
“There’s also findings of when a person can afford to have a paid advocate, their IEP is written in a very different way, and the parental concerns are embedded in every goal and have a higher impact and higher outcome,” she explained.
Expert IEP aims to provide a more accessible option to families. Families can receive a primary diagnosis after uploading an IEP, free of charge. From there, Expert IEP offers one-time and monthly subscription tiers. Families who are subscribed can benefit from multiple IEP uploads and behavioral tracking and monitoring, allowing them to track what occurs at home and send reports to school for comparison of student needs, Banks told AFROTECH™.
All in all, the platform’s recommendations aim to ensure families can reimagine what’s possible in the school environment for students with disabilities, she noted.
Impact
Already, Expert IEP has shown an increase in academic letter grades for learners, and families have experienced a 30% increase in their agency, motivation, and confidence in the process, Banks told AFROTECH™. Additionally, IEPs that the organization works with are signed on and implemented 33% faster in the school environment as a result of families leveraging the app, she also noted.
According to information on Expert IEP’s website, the company has served more than 1,800 families and reviewed more than 2,300 IEPs at the time of this writing.
There is a seven-day free trial for the platform. Banks shared that she intends to launch an enterprise version of the platform for school districts looking to adopt Expert IEP. There is a waitlist for those interested.
Funding
To support the project, Banks has raised $1.7 million in funding for Expert IEP, the majority being non-dilutive (at the time of this writing), she said. Support has come from Camelback Ventures, NewSchools Venture Fund, The Yass Prize, and pitch competitions at UC Davis, the Carlsen Center for Innovation, and Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition Prize.
Download Today
Expert IEP is available on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
