Student Record Changes 2017

We recently discovered that some school systems may be over reporting their Dropouts.

Under current data collection rules, you will get an error if you report a student as a dropout and another school system subsequently is reporting the student as enrolled in their system. However, you don't get any error or warning if another school within system reports a subsequent enrollment. To track these potentially problematic dropouts, we have added a new report in Student Record under Enrollment Reports menu. (Pic 1, 2 & 3)

Using SIS Error Check to identify missing schedules

There are 3 major enhancements to SIS Error Check application:

• Based on our analysis of just concluded year, we need to make sure each and every student in the system is scheduled correctly. This greatly reduces errors/problems in FTE, Student Record and CCRPI. (Pic 1 & 2)
• Ability for administrators to be able to turn an error ON or Off, admin users still see ALL errors, error visibility only changes for school-based users. (Pic 2)
• Ability for administrators to be able to see school counts for each error code. This is important when district users are trying to determine which schools need most help in terms of cleaning up their data. (Pic 3)
• Identify students in grades K-8 who do not have 4 core courses (English/Lang arts, Science, Mathematics and Social Studies) scheduled. (Pic 4)

Pic 1

Pic 2

Pic 3

Pic4

You only need a read-only connection to your SIS backend database (SQL Server or Oracle)

Contact us if you would like to set this up and verify if every student in the system is scheduled correctly (before schools even start).

Student Record Changes (April 2016)

New CCRPI Reports

both of these reports use Course History data for High school students along with students' current schedules. So, for these reports to work, necessary data needs to be imported from SIS database into FteTrack database. We already have scripts setup for Powerschool and Infinite Campus to do this, all you need is a read-only access to your SIS database. If you use an SIS other than the two mentioned above, contact us and we will provide file layouts to be used to export data out of your SIS.

Handling SLO Errors efficiently with FteTrack

Most school districts are having to deal with 100s or 1000s of the following errors:

• E5095 - Course reported as SLO Course in Student Class must also be reported in SR System Course
• E5096 - Course reported as SLO Course in SR System Course must be 'Y' for SLO Course in Student Class.
• E6008 - If SLO COURSE = Y, then the SLO PRE-MEASURE is required if the MARKING PERIOD is one of the following 'Y1', 'N1', 'N2','N3',‘S1’, ‘S2’,T1’, ‘T2’, ‘T3’, ‘X1’, ‘X2’, ‘X3’,'X4', unless a valid exemption code is reported.
• E6011 - In the March cycle, if SLO COURSE = Y, then the SLO POST-MEASURE is required if the MARKING PERIOD is one of the following,‘N1’, ‘N2’, 'S1',T1’, ‘T2’,‘X1’, ‘X2’, ‘X3’, 'X4'

Most of these can be fixed by fixing a few courses/sections even when the total number of errors may seem overwhelming (Pic 1).

FteTrack Changes (January 2016)

A new Data Element Total Service Minutes has been added to FTE file layout. Official Data Collection Documentation page defines this field as follows:

Report the total number of minutes for all IEP services which were in effect the week of the FTE count. Report for active students only.

One word of caution though, your SIS FTE Extract program may not have this new field in the file yet, so you may see a few of these new errors, but, you can still load the FTE file without this new data element. FteTrack will accept the file in old format, in fact, we encourage users to load their files regularly now and not wait for the DOE window to open, or, SIS vendor to release updates.

FteTrack file load process has been updated to account for this new data element, several new error codes (Fig 1) are associated with this field and can be found under "FTE Errors and Warnings summary". We also have a new report (Fig 2, 3 & 4) under "FTE MENU" with drill down capabilities.

Total Service Minutes has also been added to the Student Detail page (Fig 5)

Another big change that a lot of users have requested, is the ability to assign/remove access to individual applications (buttons on FteTrack Launchpad) for each user. Now, you can do that (Fig 6)
For example, you can give access to HR folks on CPI Track only, or, hide the CPI Track completely for school based users who don't need to deal with CPI information at all.

CRDC and FteTrack

Have you finished CRDC, yet? If not, you've probably noticed how glacial the site has become. Did you know you can 'apply' for an extension? Simply log into the CRDC site and look for the 'Admin' link. Then click on Submit Extension Request. You can select 2 week extension (to Fri. Aug. 21st) or submit a request for an additional extension (that one is a form).

With all that we do in the summer, we hardly have time for this one, so it's best to get started early. This is one thing that requires hunting down data we haven’t thought about it in a year, so it can really be a headache. The DOE and FTEtrack have changed all that!

The DOE has already uploaded some of your data to the CRDC website, so you only need to verify it, but there is still some information you will have to get from your schools. You can use FTEtrack to verify AND to collect missing data. All you need is the FTE and Student Record files from 2013-2014 uploaded into FTEtrack, and you’re all set!

The files you’ll need to have uploaded, and the location to upload them to are:

SR Student "C-level":                      C:/StateFiles/CRDC/Student.txt

SR Course "D-level":                      C:/StateFiles/CRDC/Course.txt

SR Student Safety "E-level":          C:/StateFiles/CRDC/Safety.txt

SR Enrollment "F-level":                 C:/StateFiles/CRDC/Enrollment.txt

October FTE:                                    C:/StateFiles/CRDC/FTE1.txt

If you’ve given your principals an account on FTEtrack (you have, haven’t you?) they can log in, select the CRDC forms, and simply look for the items in red. Those are the items that they need to fill in manually, as those are not in your SIS system and have not been uploaded by the DOE for you. These are things like school characteristics, total FTE of teachers and their experience, etc.

FTEtrack really is invaluable for things like how many students took and passed a subject, number of courses that were taught, and student absenteeism…no more digging through prior year data!

Since the DOE has uploaded some information for you, you can compare what is in FTEtrack to what is on the federal CRDC site. If you are using the correct files, the numbers should match or at least be fairly close to what the DOE has uploaded. Once the remaining data is filled in on FTEtrack, you can download the file by logging on as an Administrator to CRDC Track and using "Export" button (on top right). The download file can then be uploaded to the CRDC federal site.

As an administrator for Lamar County over the past 13 years, we have participated in the CRDC data collection nearly every year (for some odd reason…aren’t we lucky?) I can tell you that this year the collection has taken less than an hour for the principals and much less time for me, as opposed to taking days and weeks in the past. If FTEtrack included only the CRDC piece, it is well worth the cost!

Getting Ready for New School Year (2016)

First day of school is only a week or two away for most school districts. Most of the students have already been enrolled and scheduled for classes for the next school year.

As we know that most of the FTE segments are derived from students’ schedules, it’s of prime importance to analyze schedules for the next year now and find any missing/incomplete schedules.
This is where Student Class application (Pic 1) comes into the picture.

Pic 1

This application helps you identify: