Dear County and District Superintendents, Charter School Administrators, and Special Education Local Plan Area Directors:

California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System 2025–26 Annual Back-to-School Letter

This letter kicks off the 2025–26 data collection season for the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS).

First, we would like to congratulate Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) and Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs) for successfully certifying CALPADS 2024−25 submissions by the deadlines. The hard work of LEAs/SELPAs and their staff, under increasingly challenging deadlines and requirements, is recognized and appreciated.

Critical Uses of CALPADS Data

CALPADS data are essential for various functions critical to LEAs and the state. The data certified in the Fall 1 submission are used to determine LEAs’ funding under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and other funding determinations. Certified Fall 2 data are provided to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to monitor that certificated staff are appropriately credentialed/authorized for their assignments. End-of-Year (EOY) data are used to develop indicators on the California School Dashboard (Dashboard) and monitor services for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). CALPADS data also support key operational functions such as registering students for statewide assessments, identifying students as English Learners, determining students who are eligible for free or reduced-priced meals and SUN Bucks benefits, and identifying migrant students and students in foster care.

Superintendents, charter school administrators, and SELPA directors must ensure accurate and timely CALPADS submissions and must ensure that policies, processes, and adequate staff support are in place that result in ongoing CALPADS updates and the review and certification of accurate data by the published deadlines. Consistent with the 2024−25 school year, LEAs that fail to certify data by the published deadlines will be eligible for Differentiated Assistance (DA) and support to improve their data management practices. The CDE will be expanding the timeline for the implementation of the data quality eligibility criteria for DA into the 2026−27 school year. Therefore, the DA eligibility criteria for 2025−26 will remain the same: LEAs that do not certify CALPADS submissions by the final certification deadlines will be eligible for CALPADS DA.

Submission Deadlines

The 2025−26 submission deadlines are available on the CALPADS Calendar web page at https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sp/cl/rptcalendar.asp. Executive leadership should be aware that the EOY submissions, which provide the majority of the data used to determine Dashboard indicators, have two separate deadlines. The chronic absenteeism, student incident (suspensions, expulsions, incidents of restraint and seclusion), and special education data must be certified by July 31, 2026, to accommodate the release of the 2026 Dashboard, which is statutorily required to be released by October 15, 2026. The July 31, 2026 deadline may be challenging for staff, especially for schools that end in June, so LEAs will need to plan accordingly. The data used for the graduation rate and College/Career Indicator (CCI) on the Dashboard must be certified by August 17, 2026, which follows the August 15 graduate cutoff date to report students who graduate during the summer.

New Authentication

In keeping with best practices for data security, CALPADS will transition to a new authentication system that supports Multifactor Authentication (MFA). The CDE is in communication with the county Technical Services Committee (TSC) and has provided high-level information to CALPADS LEA Administrators and users during the September CALPADS Regional Update Meeting. Detailed guidance and training will be provided prior to the transition, which will occur during a March 2, 2026 – May 1, 2026 transition window.

In Summary

Thank you in advance for your efforts in submitting quality and timely data to the CDE.
We greatly appreciate the support of your staff, particularly LEA CALPADS Administrators and their teams, whose work is vital to many critical functions. Keeping CALPADS updated with student enrollments/exits on an ongoing basis, and certifying accurate data by the deadlines, is essential, as this information is used for many mission critical functions and high stakes purposes. Please remember that there is no opportunity for LEAs to revise data once final deadlines have passed, and after announced dates that data will be pulled for specific uses.

If you have any questions about this letter, please contact the CALPADS Office by phone at 916-324-6738 or by email at calpads@cde.ca.gov.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Liberty Van Natten, Director
Education Data Management Division

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