CALPADS Update Flash #196

To:           Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives

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

Date:       December 4, 2020

Subject:  CALPADS Update FLASH #196

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Streamlining Postsecondary Status Data Collection Through CALPADS

Data Collection Required for All CTE Completers

The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), established new career technical education (CTE) performance indicators and modified federal reporting requirements (formerly, E2 reporting) for CTE Completers. All local educational agencies (LEAs) operating CTE programs are now required to submit postsecondary status data of their CTE Completers, regardless of whether they received Perkins V funding. In addition, both the CTE Incentive Grant (CTEIG) and the Kindergarten through Grade Twelve Strong Workforce Program (K–12 SWP) grant programs require LEAs to annually submit CTE Completer information to the California Department of Education (CDE) to remain eligible for future funding. Last year these data were collected by LEAs and submitted to the CDE partly through CALPADS and partly through a survey conducted by CDE’s CTE Leadership Office (CTELO). This year, the CDE has consolidated and streamlined the reporting for all three programs to CDE through CALPADS.

LEAs are required to survey CTE completers six months following their exit from secondary education, which means LEAs should be surveying students sometime in the December 2020 – January 2021 timeframe. LEAs will then submit the survey data through the Postsecondary Status (PSTS) file to CALPADS during the Fall 2 submission, which opens January 5, 2021 and closes on March 5, 2021.

Survey Template

The CDE created a document entitled “2019–20 Career Technical Education Postsecondary Status of CTE Completer Survey Template.”  This document, which is attached, was sent by CTELO to LEA CTE staff in November. The document includes:

• A “Career Technical Education Completer Postsecondary Status Survey Template” that LEAs can use when collecting data from CTE Completers.
• A “Mapping Guide to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System Postsecondary Transition Status File” which maps each question and associated responses on the survey template to the CALPADS fields on the PSTS file.

The CTE Completers that LEAs are Required to Survey

Reporting LEAs are required to survey all CTE Completers who exited secondary education in 2019–20. A CTE Completer is a student who completed a CTE sequence of courses of 300 hours or more, and passed the capstone course with a C minus or better. This should include any student who was a CTE Completer at any time during high school, and exited secondary education in 2019–20 with one of the following School Completion statuses:

• Graduated, standard high school (HS) diploma (100)
• Students with Disabilities Certification of Completion (120)
• Adult education HS diploma (250)
• Received a HS Equivalency Certificate (320)
• Passed the California HS Proficiency Exam (and no standard diploma) (330)
• Completed grade twelve without completing graduation requirements, not grad (360)

Changes to the Postsecondary Status File

The following table summarizes the changes that were made to the Postsecondary Status (PSTS) file to include the additional data previously collected on survey conducted by the CTE Office:

Code Set Changes and New Code Sets

Additions to Postsecondary Status Code Set

LEAs should refer to the CALPADS Code Sets document, Version 12.1, for the following code sets:

• Career Technical Education Industry Sector
• Post-High School Credential

Upcoming Webinars

The CTELO will be hosting a series of webinars and providing technical assistance throughout the months of December 2020 and January 2021 to assist LEAs in the process of collecting and submitting postsecondary status data. LEA CTE staff received information on these webinars in November. CALPADS staff may benefit from attending these webinars jointly with CTE staff.

The webinars are scheduled for the following dates and times:

• December 8, 2020 (9 am – 10 am)
• December 15, 2020 (3 pm – 4 pm)
• January 12, 2021 (9 am – 10 am)
• January 12, 2021 (3 pm – 4 pm)

Further information on the webinars are provided in the attached document, “CTE Completer Data Reporting Webinar Series.”