The pilot

CetusEd is seeking its first pilot districts.

The product is finished. The evidence is not, and a pilot is how evidence gets made, with an independent evaluator who owns the data and a district that owns the decision. Scope and terms are shared directly with each district that reaches out.

Request pilot information Enter the app first

Pilot principles

Small, reversible, and yours to stop.

These six terms hold for every pilot, whatever else changes.

One school to start

A single volunteer building, expanding to as many as five only after a mid-point review that both sides agree to.

One semester

A defined start and a defined decision point, so it cannot quietly become a permanent unfunded deployment.

Parallel, never replacing

It runs alongside your current system. The SIS stays the system of record and nothing is switched off.

The district owns the data

Every record, exportable in open formats at any moment. Exit whenever you like: keep the data, owe nothing, with return-or-destroy terms in writing.

An independent evaluator

A third party administers consent and holds the research data. The developer does not touch it, and does not decide what the results say.

A go / no-go, not a sale

It ends against metrics agreed in advance. This is an evaluation; any future acquisition runs through your normal competitive process.

The founder still works in a Washington school district. If that district is yours, its own conflict process governs and he takes no part in any selection decision (ch. 42.23 RCW); for every other district it is simply where the product came from. Either way the disclosure goes to counsel at step one.

What the pilot includes

What your team gets from day one.

The whole product, not a limited edition. There is no feature held back for a paid tier.

Full evaluation suite

Cognitive, academic, and specialty batteries scored across tests, with drafted statements and IEP goal starters the evaluator edits.

Eligibility Summary

Washington’s eligibility categories side by side — 14 rows, because deafness and hearing impairment are reported separately — with per-domain rows, cross-rater consistency, and a documentation checklist.

Groups & the probe kiosk

Live scoring on a tablet, group testing that resets cleanly between students, and persistent watchlists.

EL/ML, 504 & health

A WIDA track with ELD goals and reclassification, a full Section 504 program, and school nursing with health and emergency plans.

Referrals that route by basis

Each referral routes by its basis — learning disability, suspected category, parent request, records review — set to your local policy.

Secondary transition & graduation

Postsecondary goals, the Indicator 13 checklist, credit and pathway progress, and the graduation-readiness read for students on a plan.

Team eligibility summary · categorical support

Specific Learning DisabilityStrong support

Evidence: cognitive processing pattern supports SLD eligibility · dual discrepancy met (level and rate)

IDEA §300.8(c)(10) · §300.309 · WAC 392-172A-01035

Environmental / economic disadvantageNeeds documentation

Rule-out: not yet documented — required before an SLD determination can be finalized

34 CFR §300.309(a)(3) · WAC 392-172A-03055(3)

Washington’s eligibility categories, side by side — 14 rows, because deafness and hearing impairment are reported separately. Each carries its computed support level, the evidence behind it, and the rule it rests on. The exclusionary rule-outs are the six the statute enumerates, and an undocumented one blocks the determination rather than being assumed.

A pilot starts mid-year

Active plans and running clocks come in live.

Students arrive with plans in force and deadlines already ticking. The migration brings them in with their dates — a clock reset to zero is how a compliance date gets missed during a transition.

Plans in force migrate intact

Active IEPs and 504 plans arrive with category, services, and effective dates rather than being re-created.

Clocks re-arm from real dates

Annual reviews, triennials, and evaluation deadlines compute from the actual dates, and the calendar fills itself.

In-flight referrals keep their place

Open referrals and half-finished evaluations land at the stage they had reached and continue rather than restarting.

Trust the dates, flag the rest

Imported dates are adopted; a continuing-student guard stops a migration looking like a new evaluation, and anything ambiguous lands on a review list.

Judged on evidence

Success is defined before we start.

Baseline is captured from your current process before anything is installed and held by a district designee — a real before-and-after, against targets set with your team.

Metric 1

Time per cycle

Time to move one IEP or MTSS cycle end to end. Baseline: your current process · Target: set with the team.

Metric 2

Compliance findings

Missed-deadline and documentation-error rate. Baseline: your current rate · Target: set with the team.

Metric 3

Staff experience

A pilot-user survey at start and end, run by the evaluator. Baseline: pre-pilot · Target: set with the team.

The pilot’s first number is a baseline, because there is no completed pilot yet to compare against. Deployment time and training time have not been measured in a production district either — those are outputs of this work, not inputs to it.

The path to start is short

Each step uses a process your district already has.

Step 01

Counsel reviews the vendor disclosure

Step 02

Director sponsorship — on the record

Step 03

Data-privacy agreement + FERPA designation (if a connector is used)

Step 04

Board / cabinet sign-off (if required)

Step 05

One volunteer principal opts in

Start

One school. One semester.

First move: a working session and a one-page brief. If your district would want a live roster connection during the pilot, start step 03 and the SIS vendor conversation early — those run on other organizations’ calendars. What that involves →

Why a district would do this

The first districts set the priorities.

There is a real asymmetry in going first, and it is worth naming plainly rather than dressing up.

Direct access to the builder

You reach the person who wrote the product. A defect found on a Tuesday is a conversation, not a ticket in a queue behind three hundred other districts.

Your systems go first in line

Which SIS gets a connector, and which state reporting extract gets built, is decided by what pilot districts actually run. That ordering has not been fixed. The current map →

A publishable result either way

The evaluator’s design is a standalone feasibility study. A district that runs it gets a defensible internal answer about how its own MTSS and special-education process actually runs — independent of what it decides about this software.

And the other side of it: a pilot district is testing something that has never been run at scale, by a company of one, with no completed pilot yet behind it. That is the trade, stated once.

Start the conversation.

Tell us who you are and which school might volunteer. You’ll get the one-page brief, the data-flow and security packet for IT, and the list of questions to put to counsel.

[email protected]