To: Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives
From: California Department of Education (CDE) –
California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System
(CALPADS) Team
Date: August 29, 2025
Subject: CALPADS Update FLASH #312
Congratulations on Certifying 2024−25 EOY Submissions
The California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) team recognizes and appreciates all the work and dedicated efforts of CALPADS Administrators and their staff in submitting, reviewing, and approving their End-of-Year (EOY) submissions by the Amendment Window Deadline. The CALPADS and the CDE Special Education teams also appreciate the work and efforts of LEA special education coordinators and Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs) in reviewing and approving the EOY 3 and 4 submissions for their LEAs, enabling final certification. Finally, the CDE recognizes and values the ongoing effort of LEAs to strengthen collaboration with site and program staff to ensure data quality and to meet earlier EOY submission deadlines. Congratulations to all!
2025−26 EOY Submission Deadlines and Changes
Why are the EOY submission deadlines earlier?
The California School Dashboard (Dashboard) provides parents and educators with information on school and district progress so that 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 Education Omnibus Trailer Bill, Senate Bill 114 (Chapter 48, Statutes of 2023) requires the CDE to release the Dashboard by progressively earlier dates.
Since the Dashboard is based on data certified by LEAs through the CALPADS EOY submissions, earlier release dates for the Dashboard have required that the CALPADS EOY Amendment Window closes earlier each year.
Table 1 in this document summarizes the statutorily mandated Dashboard release dates, and the corresponding CALPADS EOY Amendment Window deadlines that enable the timely calculation of Dashboard indicators. The CDE initially communicated with LEAs about these deadlines in September 2023. As Table 1 displays, in 2025−26, the Dashboard deadline is one month earlier than the prior year, and the July 31, 2026 CALPADS EOY Amendment Window Deadline is one week earlier than the prior year.
Table 1: Dashboard and EOY Deadlines
| Deadline for… | 2022−23 | 2023−24 | 2024−25 | 2025−26 and beyond |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | December 15 | December 1 | November 15 | October 15 |
| EOY Amendment Window | August 25 | August 16 | August 8 | July 31 |
What challenges do the earlier deadlines create?
The new July 31 EOY Amendment Window Deadline is two weeks before the August 15 graduate cut-off date and the subsequent pull of data for the 4-year Adjusted Cohort Graduate Rate (ACGR) or “cohort.” This creates a misalignment between the graduate cohort data pulled in August and the following data that LEAs certify on July 31:
- Course completion, Career Technical Education (CTE) participants and completers, and work-based learning data; and
- One-year graduate and completer counts
Changes to EOY submission to support the July 31 Amendment Window Deadline
As announced in the May 2025 CALPADS Regional Update Meetings, in 2025−26, the EOY submissions will be consolidated into two submissions with different deadlines:
- A “new” EOY 1 submission will include data collected in the former EOY 2, 3, and 4 submissions, and will not include one-year graduates and completers, which was part of the former EOY 3 submission.
- A “new” EOY 2 submission will include the data collected in the former EOY 1 submission and one-year graduates and completers. The new EOY 2 submission includes the data used in the College/Career Indicator (CCI) on the Dashboard and will have the same deadline as the cohort pull.
Table 2 in this document displays the 2025−26 EOY changes and submission deadlines, which are also posted on the CDE CALPADS Calendar web page here: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sp/cl/rptcalendar.asp
Table 2: 2025−26 EOY Submission Deadlines
| CALPADS EOY Submission | Certification Deadline | Amendment Window Deadline |
|---|---|---|
“New” EOY 1 Formerly EOY 2, 3, 4 Does not include one-year graduates and completers |
July 17, 2026 SELPAs strongly encouraged to approve by this date |
July 31, 2026 SELPAS required to approve by this date |
“New” EOY 2 Formerly EOY 1 Includes one-year graduates and completers |
August 17, 2026 (Monday following the August 15 graduate cut-off date) |
N/A |
As displayed in Table 3 below, the new EOY 2 submission deadline is aligned with the pull of data from CALPADS to calculate the ACGR or “cohort.”
Table 3: Data Pull for Cohort
| Data Pull for… | Date of Data Pull |
|---|---|
Cohort |
August 17, 2026 (Monday following the August 15 graduate cut-off date, and same as EOY 2 certification deadline) |
Summary of EOY Changes
New EOY 1 = Former EOY 2, 3, 4 (not including one-year graduate and completer data)
The new EOY 1 submission will include the following:
- The data submitted in the former EOY 2, 3, and 4 submissions: Program eligibility/participation, homeless counts, Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP) counts, behavioral incidents (restraint/seclusion, suspensions, expulsions), student absence summary, cumulative enrollment, and special education (counts, services, postsecondary outcomes). The new EOY 1 will not include one-year graduates and completers.
- The new data collections for Attendance Recovery (AR) via the Student Absence Summary (STAS) file, Expanded Learning Programs (ELP) via new LEA Program (LEAP) file, and will identify students with disabilities that graduate and dropout between July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026 (inclusive).
The SELPAs, which previously approved EOY 3 and 4, will be strongly encouraged to approve the new EOY 1 submission by the Certification Deadline and will be required to approve by the Amendment Window Deadline.
The Amendment Window Deadline for the new EOY 1 submission will always be July 31. If July 31 is on a Saturday or Sunday, the deadline will always be on the following Monday.
New EOY 2 = Former EOY 1 (including one-year graduate and completer data)
The new EOY 2 submission will include the following:
- The data collected as part of the former EOY 1 submission: Course completion, career technical education (CTE) participants and completers, and work-based learning.
- The one-year graduate and completer data that was previously certified as part of the former EOY 3 submission.
The SELPAs are not required to approve the new EOY 2 submission.
The new EOY 2 submission will not have an Amendment Window. The Certification Deadline for the new EOY 2 submission will always be one day following the August 15 graduate cut-off date. If August 15 is a Friday or Saturday, the Certification Deadline will always be the following Monday.
Cohort Pull
- The graduate cut-off date remains August 15.
- The pull of data for the ACGR will always be the same date as the new EOY 2 Certification Deadline and will always be one day following the August 15 graduate cut-off date. If August 15 is a Friday or Saturday, the cohort pull will occur on the following Monday.
How do these changes address submission issues?
- Certifying course completion, CTE pathway participation and completion, and work-based learning after the August 15 graduate cut-off date and aligning with the pull of data for the ACGR, better ensures that LEAs have uploaded all the necessary data for cohort students included in the College/Career Indicator (CCI) on the Dashboard.
- Aligning the certification of data for the one-year graduates and completers with the pull of data for the ACGR ensures consistency across the students included in these measures.
- In addition, merging the previous EOY 2, 3, and 4 submissions results in all data being certified at the same time. This improves data quality by ensuring LEAs certify a consistent set of students. In prior years, although the EOY deadlines were the same for all four submissions, many LEAs certified each submission on different dates and times, resulting in LEAs certifying different sets of student enrollment and demographic data with each submission.
How will these changes impact LEAs?
These changes will impact LEAs in various ways, such as:
- Providing LEAs more time to submit, review, and certify data on graduates and completers, particularly for students graduating in the summer.
- Providing LEAs more time to submit, review, and certify data used in calculating the CCI, including course completion, CTE completers, and work-based learning. In particular, this gives LEAs more time to connect with site staff to review the data for accuracy prior to certification.
- Improving the quality of data by providing LEAs an aligned set of data to certify.
- Enhancing the efficiency of error resolution by consolidating the Certification Validation Rules (CVRs) and Certification Data Discrepancies (CDDs)—previously distributed across four EOY submissions—into the new streamlined EOY 1 and 2 submissions.
- Providing LEAs with more timely revisions as the revision process will run for two submissions instead of four.
2025−26 Phase-in of EOY Data Discrepancies
The Data Discrepancy (DDs) process is structured to enable LEAs to view DDs during the year, and before a submission window opens, when the DDs become Certification Data Discrepancies (CDDs). This allows LEAs to resolve discrepancies on any data they have submitted throughout the year and minimize the number of CDDs to resolve once a submission window opens. This provides LEAs more time to review reports for accuracy and amend data as necessary.
During this transition year, when the school year is rolled over in CALPADS on September 9, 2025, the new EOY 1 and EOY 2 DDs will not appear immediately. They will become visible once they have been mapped to the corresponding EOY 1 and EOY 2 submission cycles, which can be selected via the Submission Cycle dropdown in the DD user interface. As the DDs are mapped to the new submissions, they will begin to appear. The CDE has prioritized this work so that all DDs are available well before the opening of EOY and will keep LEAs informed as EOY DDs become available. All DDs will be available as CDDs once the EOY submission window opens on May 5, 2026.
Service and Support: CALPADS-CSIS Service Desk | calpads-support@cde.ca.gov | 916-325-9210