Dear County and District Superintendents and Charter School Administrators:

Important Data Collection Updates

2018–19 Upcoming Deadline: Critical Data for Dashboard

We are currently in the middle of the 2018–19 End-of-Year (EOY) submission window for the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). Local educational agencies (LEAs) are reminded that the EOY 1, 2, and 3 submissions to CALPADS must be certified by August 30, 2019. These certified data will be used to determine student groups for the California School Dashboard (Dashboard) and to calculate the College and Career, Discipline, and Chronic Absenteeism indicators, and the Dashboard Alternative School Status (DASS) one-year graduation rate. LEAs that certify before the certification deadline are reminded that any subsequent updates will not be included unless the LEA decertifies and recertifies their data by the certification deadline.

On the same day, August 30, 2019, data in the CALPADS Operational Data Store (ODS) will be pulled and used to calculate the 4-year Adjusted Graduation Cohort Rate (ACGR) used for federal reporting and the Dashboard. There will be no opportunity to amend these data after August 30, 2019, and so it is important that LEAs have updated the CALPADS ODS and have certified their EOY submissions by this deadline.

Earlier Pull of Data Used for Cohort

LEAs should be aware that the CDE will pull data from the CALPADS ODS earlier than in previous years for the purpose of calculating the ACGR. In order for 12th grade students completing requirements for graduation during the summer to be counted as graduates (which they must do by August 15th), LEAs must update CALPADS by August 30. Additionally,12th grade students who will be returning the next year to complete requirements for graduation should have their 2019–20 enrollments posted in the CALPADS ODS by August 30 to be included in the “still enrolled” category instead of the “drop out” category for the 2019 Cohort. Either way, the student is not considered a graduate, but if the student enrolls and then graduates during the subsequent year, they will be counted as a fifth year graduate in 2020.

Publication of Data Showing Why Students are Absent

LEAs currently submit to CALPADS whether students are absent due to an excused absence, unexcused absence, out-of-school suspension or in-house suspension. All of these reasons are considered absences in the calculation of the chronic absenteeism rate, except for in-house suspensions. The CDE will begin publishing the chronic absenteeism reports with more detail, identifying whether student absences are excused, unexcused, or due to an out-of-school suspension. LEAs currently have visibility into these data in reports within CALPADS and should use the data to determine how best to address any attendance problems.

Use of EOY 3 Exit Data Will Be Used for College-Going Rate

The CDE recently posted on DataQuest a College-Going Rate (CGR) report. The CDE plans to continue producing this report and will use the data LEAs certify as part of their EOY 3, cumulative enrollment data, which includes how students in grade 12 exit. The CGR determines a student eligible to be considered “college going” if they are a high school completer. A high school completer is any student who either (1) graduated from a California public high school with a regular high school diploma or (2) successfully finished high school as a non-graduate completer during the respective CGR reporting period, regardless of when they first entered grade 9. Non-graduate completers include students who finished high school without receiving a regular high school diploma (i.e., California High School Proficiency Exam [CHSPE] completers, General Education Development [GED] completers, and adult education high school diploma graduates, but not Special Education Certificates of Completion). More information about the CGR report can be found on the CDE Information about the College-Going Rate (CGR) web page: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sd/sd/cgrinfo.asp [Note: The preceding link is no longer valid, and the web page appears to have moved. Here is the new web address for the CDE Information about the College-Going Rate (CGR): https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/ad/cgrinfo.asp]

2019–20 Major Changes

Transition of Special Education Data into CALPADS

The CDE will be transitioning the data currently submitted to the California Special Education Management Information System (CASEMIS) to CALPADS in 2019–20 in order to streamline the data collections and increase data quality. To help ensure a successful transition for your LEA, it is absolutely critical that staff who maintain the LEA’s special education system (SES) and staff who maintain the LEA’s student information system (SIS) are working together right now to ensure that the data in the two systems match. It is particularly important that students with disabilities (SWD) are enrolled in the SIS and that the data on those students are in the SES with the correct statewide student identifier (SSID). If the SSIDs do not match or if a student with disabilities is not enrolled in CALPADS through the SIS, the LEA will not be able to submit special education data for that student.

It is also critical that LEAs, that have authorized charter schools, ensure that their charter schools are prepared to submit data for their general education students and their students with disabilities in the same way. LEAs should refer to the June 20, 2019 letter sent to superintendents and charter school administrators on this topic. Further detailed information was also sent to Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPA) directors and LEA CALPADS Administrators.

As announced in the June 20, 2019 letter to superintendents and charter school administrators, in 2019–20, LEAs must approve their Fall 1 submissions to CALPADS, which includes data that were previously part of the CASEMIS collection, by the approval deadline of December 6, 2019, in order that SELPAs are able to review and approve the data for SWD by December 20, 2019, the Fall 1 certification deadline. Certifying Fall 1 provides the data used in funding calculations and reduces potential noncompliance with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and corresponding corrective actions. Therefore working now to integrate SES and SIS data will help that ensure the LEA is able to certify on time.

Use of Fall 2 Data for Teacher Assignment Monitoring

Beginning in 2019–20, the assignments of all certificated staff submitted as part of the Fall 2 data submission will be monitored to ensure that they have the appropriate credentials and authorizations. The Fall 2 assignment data certified in CALPADS will be provided to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) who will identify misassignments. The results will be used to meet both state and federal reporting requirements. The CDE in conjunction with CTC provided numerous regional training sessions, WebEx training, and have held weekly “office hours” to prepare LEAs. Any staff who were unable to attend the in-person training sessions should take the time to view our recorded webinar versions of these training sessions on the CDE Promoting Equitable Access to Teachers Training web page at:  https://www.cde.ca.gov/pd/ee/peatprofdev.asp. LEAs should have already completed mapping their local courses to the new State Course codes. It is critical that curriculum staff lead this effort and work collaboratively with credential analysts and CALPADS staff to ensure quality data for assignment monitoring.

Collection of Restraint and Seclusion Data

LEAs have been required to submit the use of behavioral restraints and seclusion to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) data collection. Assembly Bill 2657 (Chapter 998, Statutes of 2018) now requires LEAs to annually collect and submit behavioral restraint and seclusion data to the CDE for all students. LEAs should refer to California Education Code Section 49005.1 for specific definitions, which are consistent with the OCR definitions. It should be noted that all incidents of the use of behavioral restraints and seclusion must be reported, and do not have to result in a suspension or expulsion. The CDE will begin to collect these data through CALPADS beginning in 2019–20 as part of the EOY 3 – Student Incident data submission. Many LEAs currently have policies and procedures in place to identify, document, and report incidents involving restraint and seclusion for students with disabilities; however, because these data will be collected for all students, it is imperative that LEAs ensure all staff are appropriately trained to identify, document, and report these incidents. The collection of these data in CALPADS has been communicated to CALPADS administrators and the SIS vendors. In order to report the data to CALPADS in 2019–20, LEAs need to begin collecting these data when school opens for the 2019–20 school year.

In Summary

Thank you in advance for your efforts in submitting quality and timely data to the CDE.
I appreciate your ongoing support of your staff, particularly LEA CALPADS Administrators and their staff, who through their work are playing a key role in so many critical functions. Keeping CALPADS updated with student enrollments and exits, and certifying accurate data during the submission windows, has become increasingly important because of the use of the data in mission critical functions and for high stakes purposes. Please remember that there will be no opportunity for LEAs to revise data once the final certification and ODS data-pull deadlines have passed.

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.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Jerry Winkler, Director
Educational Data Management Division

JW:pm