CALPADS Update FLASH #160
Topics include: Review District of Special Education Accountability Field for Accuracy.To: Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives
From: California Department of Education (CDE) –
California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) Team
Date: August 15, 2019
Subject: CALPADS Update FLASH #160
Review District of Special Education Accountability Field for Accuracy
The CDE announced in a webinar on June 21, 2019 that for the Academic Indicator on the 2019 California School Dashboard (Dashboard), for students with disabilities whose district of service (the district providing the majority of instruction and where the student is primarily enrolled) and the district of special education accountability (DSEA) are different, assessment results for purposes of the Academic Indicator will be attributed back to the district of special education accountability, which in most cases is the student’s district of geographic residence. A second webinar on this topic will be held on August 23, 2019 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
LEAs submit a student’s DSEA on the Student Program (SPRG) file, in field 3.22 – District of Special Education Accountability. It is critical that LEAs review the data populated in this field for accuracy, because students with disabilities will be attributed to the school district or charter school reported in this field for the Academic Indicator on the 2019 Dashboard. To validate that the DSEA is correct, LEAs should refer to their local special education data systems (SEDS), as these are the source systems for this piece of information, and then compare the DSEA in the SEDS with what is in the local student information system (SIS). If there is a discrepancy between the DSEA in the SEDS and the SIS, LEAs should update their SIS accordingly and submit the correction to CALPADS prior to the August 30, 2019 CALPADS End-of-Year (EOY) certification deadline.
Attributing students with disabilities back to their DSEA will be consistent with how students with disabilities attending county offices of education in schools designated as special education schools in the Public Schools Database and nonpublic schools have always been treated in calculating the Academic Indicator on the Dashboard in previous years. Students with disabilities will also continue to be included in the Academic Indicator of the school where the student is primarily enrolled.
Reviewing District of Special Education Accountability (DSEA) and updating in CALPADS
CALPADS currently has no aggregate or student-level reports showing which students will be attributed to the DSEA that the district of service or the DSEA can view. The CDE hopes to provide these reports in the 2020–21 academic year. In the meantime, LEAs can request a Student Program (SPRG) Operational Data Store (ODS) extract with program code 144, Academic Year 2018–19 for enrollments from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019 to view the DSEA for each student. The results can be downloaded for further analysis.
As noted above, if there is a discrepancy between the DSEA in the SEDS and the SIS, LEAs should update their SIS and submit the correction to CALPADS using the Student Program (SPRG) file via batch prior to the August 30, 2019 certification deadline. Due to the upcoming transition of the California Special Education Management Information System (CASEMIS) to CALPADS, updates currently cannot be made using Online Maintenance.