CALPADS Update Flash #183

To:           Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives

From:      California Department of Education (CDE) –
                California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) Team

Date:       July 2, 2020

Subject:  CALPADS Update FLASH #183

Reporting Career Technical Education Concentrators for 2019–20

As described in CALPADS Flash #164, the Strengthening Career and Technical Education (CTE) for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), previously known as the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 (Perkins IV), modifies federal reporting requirements and establishes new CTE performance indicators. A new state plan is in the final approval stages, and the California Department of Education (CDE) will be modifying the CALPADS Student Career Technical Education (SCTE) file and related CTE reports to reflect these changes beginning in 2020–21.

In the meantime, the CDE will be able to use the data LEAs submit and certify in the 2019–20 End-of-Year (EOY) 1 submission to meet federal Perkins V reporting requirements. In the new State Plan for CTE, the state’s definition for CTE concentrator was revised to be a student who completes a CTE pathway sequence and passes the capstone course with a C- or better. This aligns the Perkins concentrator definition with the CTE pathway completer definition under the College/Career Indicator (CCI) on the California School Dashboard.

Currently, CALPADS Reports 3.14 – CTE Concentrators and Completers Count and 3.15 - CTE Concentrators and Completers – Student List still capture CTE concentrators based on the prior Perkins IV definition of CTE concentrator. With the change to the concentrator definition under Perkins V, the CDE will not report the count of concentrators displayed on these reports. Instead, to meet Perkins V reporting requirements, the CDE will report, for concentrators, the count of students who are reported as completing a CTE pathway on the SCTE file and are reported as receiving a grade of C- or better in the capstone course for the reported CTE pathway on the Student Course Section Completion (SCSC) file. Therefore, for the current EOY 1 submission, LEAs should focus their efforts on ensuring they have identified all students who are CTE pathway completers by populating Field 11.14 - CTE Pathway Completion Academic Year ID on the SCTE file, as well as ensuring capstone course completion data are accurate on the SCSC file.

Reporting Work-Based Learning Indicator Data for Students with Disabilities from the Special Education Data Systems

Field 14.47 - Workability I Work-Based Learning Program Completion (Work-Based Experience) Indicator and Field 14.48 - Department of Rehabilitation Student Services Work-based Learning Program Completion (Classroom-Based Work Exploration) Indicator are currently captured on the Special Education (SPED) File. These two indicators are being considered for inclusion in the Career/College Indicator in the future.

Currently, some type of meeting or amendment must occur to generate a transaction from the Special Education Data Systems (SEDS). Since the work-based learning indicators generally do not occur in a meeting or are part of an amendment, LEAs are sometimes unable to update CALPADS with these indicators. To address this issue, beginning in 2020–21, these two indicators will not be collected from the Special Education (SPED) file and instead will be included, along with other work-based learning indicators, on the new Work-based Learning (WBLR) file that will be generated from the student information system. Therefore, for this year, LEAs should submit these two work-based indicators on the SPED file only when possible.

Obtaining Statewide Student Identifiers for Students with Disabilities who are Transitioning from the Part C Program to the Part B Program

Many students with disabilities (SWD) served by regional centers on the Part C Program are referred to County Offices of Education (COE) or other LEAs when they near the age of three, to be evaluated for Part B Program eligibility. Though these students are on active Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSP) when they are referred for the Part B Initial Evaluation, they generally do not have Statewide Student Identifiers (SSIDs), which will be needed for CALPADS reporting.

Therefore, to facilitate acquiring SSIDs and to establish an accurate Initial Special Education Entry Date (the initial date when a student enters the special education program), the CDE encourages COEs and LEAs to establish business processes with their regional centers that include use of an enrollment form that captures the information needed to obtain an SSID and the Initial Special Education Entry date when a student is initially evaluated for the Part C Program. If such business processes are not in place and such information is not readily available when students are referred for Part B Initial Evaluation, COEs and LEAs should require the parent to complete an enrollment form to capture the information needed to obtain an SSID for the student as well as the Initial Special Education Entry Date when the parent signs the parent consent for assessment.

Special Education Program Exit Reason Cleanup

LEAs are currently experiencing the following fatal Certification Validation Rule (CVR) errors in EOY 4:

• CERT134 - Missing Student Exit Reason Code for Student with Disabilities who left program after Completing HS
• CERT138 - Missing Student Enrollment Exit Reason for Student with Disabilities Dropping from Program

These errors occur when LEAs report one of the following Special Education Program Exit Reason codes in the SPED file, but the student’s enrollment record does not reflect the same type of exit reason or completion status. The two Special Education Program Exit Reason codes that are generating these errors are:

• 71 – HSCompleter
• 74 – DropOut

During the Fall 1 submission window, CALPADS allowed these special education program exit reason codes to be submitted in the SPED file; however, SEDS vendors were asked to cease sending these program exit reason codes in the SPED file after the Fall 1 Certification deadline. While LEAs can continue to use these codes in the SEDS, the SEDS vendors are no longer including them in the SPED extracts being sent to CALPADS for EOY 4. However, since these program exit reason codes were allowed during Fall 1, these exits are now triggering CERT134 and CERT138.

To address this issue, the CDE will perform a data cleanup to remove these exit codes from the SPED records in the CALPADS Operational Data Store (ODS). Once these exit codes are removed, these CVRs will no longer trigger fatal errors. The CDE will notify LEAs when the exit codes have been removed.