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:

Honor Roll in HOPE Track

As we are nearing the end of another school year, high schools are looking at graduation and printing honor rolls. Since schools already have to report High School transcripts for HOPE scholarships to GA411, we think, the same dataset should be used to determine students who have ALL A's & B's.

Latest version of HOPE Track adds another option to "Reports" tab for schools to be able to review and print this information (Picture 1).

Please refer to the original post about HOPE Track for the download location.

Picture 1

CRDC Course Mapping

Course related counts are calculated as follows:

• For number of classes, we count the unique combination of Course Number and Section Number for each school
• For Students in Course counts, we count the number of students taking one or more course in that particular course category.

.. and here are the course mappings used in CRDC Update application based on DOE Course Numbers

Algebra I
27.x340xxx
27.x350xxx
27.x440xxx
27.x610xxx
27.x621xxx
27.x810xxx
27.x910xxx
27.x971xxx
27.x975xxx
27.x981xxx

Introducing FteTrack Launchpad

New version of FteTrack (version V20150107 or newer) introduces a single login page (Figure 1) for all of our application offerings. All of the existing account based security rules still apply, i.e., school based users will still have access to only their school's data in individual application pages.

Figure 1

Student Record Enhancements, Tips & Tricks (December 2014)

DOE's Student Record "data cleansing" has been problematic at best. Several edits are either not working or if they are working, they are not working as they are supposed to.

I have wasted several weeks trying to "figure out" what's wrong with our data, only to realize that the DOE still hasn't implemented changes that they published months back at their end.

Good news is, we have all of those edits and file layout changes implemented in our application.

Course level data creates a lot of problems regarding Students in grades 6-12 not having enough courses in the file. The problem is, most schools are not yet finished with first semester still, so the course level extract generated by the SIS doesn't have enough courses for most students.

To get around this problem, what we have done is to provide a way in SR application so that you can merge your Student Class data with SR Course extract. This will significantly reduce your course level errors and will also prepare you end users for errors that they will see once courses in Student Class have a final grade and are included in SR Course extract.