NEWTON, MA Karen Gage’s son was 6 years old when she realized he could not remember how to write the letter ‘T’. He needed intensive literacy intervention for dyslexia, but the school said it was too early to be concerned. No one seemed to want to acknowledge he wasn’t making progress so it was up to her to push for answers and to get him the help he needed.
It would take 4 years for Gage’s son to see steady reading improvement with the right interventions. “Once I realized that he could slip through the cracks, advocating for my son became my second job. It was a long, slow learning curve that I was only able to speed up by paying by the hour for professional guidance and advocacy”, says Gage.
Gage’s background in education technology and entrepreneurship led her to create KidvoKit, a new product designed to empower parents to advocate for their child’s special education needs. Today, KidovKit is officially launching an Early Access Program in the state of Massachusetts, offering 250 parents a full year for free.
KidvoKit’s technology takes the mountain of documentation that parents receive (IEPs, progress reports, evaluations, emails, etc.) and automatically organizes them into a digital IEP binder. These documents become a historical paper trail that lay the foundation for advocacy. However, maintaining this information is a manual and time-consuming process that falls entirely on the parents to organize and navigate on their own.
In addition to leveraging technology to curate and organize documents, KidvoKit’s AI IEP assistant instantly answers parents’ questions about IEPs, special education and parental rights. KidvoKit makes state regulations and procedures from the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education easy to understand, explaining confusing terminology and answering a wide range of parent questions. It’s much easier and faster than searching the internet for the right information or having to find another parent who knows the answer.
While KidvoKit is only available in MA today, the product will roll out in new states ahead of the fall back to school season. Parents can join the waitlist to get notifications when KidvoKit is available in their area.
“KidvoKit is an amazing resource for parents. The answers are so high quality and it organizes my documents like magic. Now that I’ve been using it I can’t imagine going back!” said Liz, Massachusetts parent.
About KidvoKit: KidvoKit is on a mission to empower parents to be the special education advocate their child needs. We believe that safe AI can fill that wide gap between the slow time-consuming learning curve and hiring an advocate. KidvoKit’s focus is to streamline the journey and illuminate the path using the wealth of documents and data many parents already possess. To learn more about KidvoKit visit: https://kidvokit.com/