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

New California School Dashboard Deadlines and Impact on Current and Future End-of-Year Data Submission Deadlines

The California School Dashboard (Dashboard) provides parents and educators with meaningful information on school and district progress so they can participate in decisions to improve student learning. In the interest of providing actionable data to support students earlier in the school year, the 2023−24 K-12 Education Omnibus Trailer Bill, Senate Bill 114 (Chapter 48, Statues of 2023), includes language that:

• Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to release the California School Dashboard (Dashboard) earlier in 2023−24, and each of the subsequent two years;
• Requires county offices of education (COE) to provide technical assistance to support school districts data management processes.
• To accommodate the requirement to release the Dashboard earlier in the school year, local educational agencies (LEAs) will need to certify their End-of-Year (EOY) submissions earlier to CALPADS. The proposed deadlines currently being considered are displayed in Table 1. The CDE will finalize these deadlines following review of LEA input. Please submit any comments regarding these deadlines by September 22, 2023 by email to calpads@cde.ca.gov. The CDE will review and consider any input received prior to finalizing the deadlines.

Table 1
Proposed EOY Deadlines

Summer Graduates

The shift in these deadlines also requires the shift of the timeline for submitting “summer graduates” in the 4-year Adjusted Cohort Graduate Rate from August 15 to June 30. This change is proposed to begin in the 2023−24 school year to align with the end of the academic year. This means “summer graduates” will shift from being counted as four-year graduates in the prior school year to five-year graduates in the subsequent school year. The CDE will account for this change on the 2024 Dashboard in the calculation of the graduation rate indicator so that LEAs are not adversely impacted by this shift in deadlines.

• Recognizing that the earlier EOY deadlines may impact LEA business practices, the scheduling of staff resources, and potentially school calendars, the CDE plans to post final EOY deadlines for 2023−24 and the subsequent two years this fall, to give LEAs time to make any necessary adjustments.

New Technical Assistance Requirements

School districts that do not certify their data submissions by the CDE established CALPADS deadlines for any of the submissions will receive technical assistance from their COE. This requirement is effective with the 2023−24 data submissions and the technical assistance will be focused on improving the school district’s data management processes in order that they are able to certify by the deadlines in the future.

In Summary

The CDE, with assistance from the California School Information Services (CSIS), is committed to supporting LEAs to submit high-quality data. In addition to the support and training currently provided, the CALPADS Operations Office and CSIS will work with the COE User Group to identify additional strategies for enhancing LEA support. The CDE also continues to place priority on ensuring a stable, well-functioning system and is continuing to make improvements to enhance system usability and performance.

The ongoing support of your staff, particularly LEA CALPADS Administrators and their staff, is much appreciated. Keeping CALPADS updated with student enrollments and exits, and program data, along with certifying accurate data by the new deadlines, has become increasingly important because of the use of the data in mission critical functions and for high stakes purposes to assist with improving student outcomes.

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

Sincerely,

Jerry Winkler, Director
Educational Data Management Division

JW:pm

cc: CALPADS LEA Administrators