Dear County and District Superintendents and Charter School Administrators:

2021–22 Data Collections: California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System Update

Since its implementation in 2009, the amount of data that Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) must submit to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) has increased significantly to meet new and ever-changing state and federal reporting and accountability requirements. In addition, the more recent use of CALPADS data for operational purposes, such as for statewide test registration, has increased the frequency of LEA data submissions to CALPADS. While significant technical upgrades have been made to CALPADS, such as moving into a cloud environment, the process by which data are ingested into the system has not been updated since 2009. This has resulted in increasingly degraded performance, with CALPADS users experiencing unacceptable wait times for data to be posted to the system.

To address the performance issues, the CDE initiated the Post Process Redevelopment Project to significantly decrease the time it takes for files to be posted to CALPADS. To accomplish this objective, some changes were made that will initially result in more work on the part of LEA staff to acquire Statewide Student Identifiers (SSIDs) and to ensure the integrity of those SSIDs. The CDE fully recognizes the need to alleviate this new burden on LEA staff and will be working to implement additional functionality in the near term to facilitate the SSID acquisition process. Ideally this functionality would have been included as part of the initial rollout, however, it was also important to make the system available as soon as possible so that LEAs could enroll new/transferring students in CALPADS so that these students could take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) and the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) assessments within required windows.

The CDE also recognized the risk of implementing such significant system changes during the middle of the assessment season, however, it was critical to have the new post process in place prior to the opening of the 2021−22 End-of-Year (EOY) submission, which includes the majority of data used for state accountability. The CDE did not want LEA staff to experience the extreme wait times they experienced during the Fall 2 submission.

The CDE also apologizes for the larger than desired number of defects currently in the system. Some of these defects relate to the complexity of migrating many years’ worth of data into a new data structure. Unfortunately, some of the defects impact the nightly export of data to the Educational Testing Services (ETS) used for test registration, which is delaying test registration for new/transferring students. Addressing the defects that impact test registration is a high priority which the CDE hopes to resolve in the next few days. With regard to other defects, the CDE is committed to resolving these issues as quickly as possible. LEA staff have access to the “Known Issues” list which is being updated multiple times a day with new and existing defects and those that have been resolved.

Finally, the CDE recognizes that some of the changes made to accommodate the goal of increasing system performance, presumes that quality data are maintained in local student information systems (SIS’) and impacts how LEA staff interact with CALPADS. The CDE is committed to making more training available and to work harder with LEAs, and SIS and special education data system vendors to understand the impact on users with the goal of looking for ways to make the submission of quality data as efficient as possible.

We understand the frustration that LEAs, and CALPADS data coordinators in particular, have, and ask for patience as we stabilize the system. We remain confident that system performance will be significantly improved, and commit to working on further system enhancements that enable LEA staff to do their work as efficiently as possible and which result in quality data that can be used by districts and the state to improve student outcomes.

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

cc: CALPADS Administrators
Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) Directors