Special Education News

NEW: December Timeline

1. Census (count) day is Monday, December 2, 2024. All students enrolled and receiving SE services will be counted for this certification.

2. Data Exchange Help Tickets must be submitted by 11:59 pm ET on Monday, December 2, 2024.

3. December 3, 2024 - nightly validations end. Beginning 12/4/2024 if a validation is necessary navigate to the Validate page and select the Re-Run Validation button

4. December 9, 2024 - Certification starts. Beginning 12/9/2024 if a validation is necessary navigate to the Certify page to select the Request Validation link. The validation request will be logged in the Admin portion of DEX for approval. When completing the form to justify the validation request, be specific as to the reason validation is required. A general statement such as ‘Need validation’ will be denied and request for more specific information will be sent.

5. December 13, 2024 - Certification Ends at 11:59 pm ET.

Updated: Special Education Conflicts Resolution

1. There are currently over 600 SE records that are in conflict. Now is the time to resolve these conflicting records. It may be helpful to review the Knowledge Hub guidance ‘How to Determine the LEA to Report Special Education Data’.

2. If Contacted by school stating there is SE conflict but you don’t have error message, it is likely that there is an SE program record in DEX for the STN that has not been closed. Please review the Student Special Education Program Association resource on the DEX Review page and provide the missing end date and reason code. REMINDER: this is not a enrollment conflict - the SSA record may be exited but you have forgotten to end the SE Program record.

NEW: Special Education Director Contact Missing

Data Reporting is currently working to reach out to LEAs where there are still remaining SE conflict messages. We are finding that there is a significant number of LEAs that have not provided to DEX the Contact Classification for their Special Education Director. Providing complete contact information is vitally important to IDOE as that is the only way we have of knowing who to reach out to when it is necessary to make ‘contact’ regarding a specific dataset. We request at this time attention be given to providing the Special Education Director to DEX. The following guidance has been provided in the Data Exchange Weekly Announcement for many weeks: “Security coordinators for all traditional public, charter, and accredited non-public schools are responsible for ensuring their organization’s key contacts for the 2024-2025 school year are set. Key contacts, including the roles of Superintendent, Financial Contact, Special Education Director, Principal, Data Exchange Contact, etc., are needed for the 2024-2025 school year even if those contacts were provided last school year.” 

New: Access to EdPlan Tile - Student Support Plans

New users who have the Student Support Plans role and are getting the following error

Authentication Error: ‘Either First Name and Last Name or Full name are required.’

1. Verify that the SPN is associated to the Student Support Plans classification

2. Reach out to PCG (indianaiep@pcgus.com) for assistance.  

3. Schools need to provide PCG with the User’s Name and SPN for Account Setup. 

NEW: 2025 Alt Ed Program List Posted

The 2024-2025 Approved Alternative Education Program List has been posted to DEX Knowledge Hub > School Support Hub > Reporting Guides > Alternative Education > References Alternative Education Program List

Reminder: Alternative Education Program Records

If 2024-2025 program records have already been submitted to DEX, be advised that there may have been Alternative Programs submitted that have had a program name change, or possibly in some cases the program was not renewed for this current school year. SIS vendors are aware of this concern and will work with their customers to assist with making corrections to already submitted data as needed. As has been posted in previous announcements, the 2024-2025 Alternative Program List would not be finalized and ready for submission until early to mid-November 2024. Since there have been similar concerns in previous years IDOE has worked with IDOE business owner to determine how to have the programs identified and the list available in August of each school year to avoid the same continuing issue.

Working with your vendor, please make every effort to clean up any Alternative Education program records by January 6, 2025. IDOE can provide this link that identifies which programs have had a name change or did not renew for the current school year to assist with cleanup. Be advised that on January 6, 2025, IDOE will be deleting out of the ODS any records where the incorrect program has been reported and also on this date, IDOE will no longer accept unapproved Alternative Program names. (If SIS does not delete the incorrect program record, it will be deleted by IDOE).

Office Hours for 2024-2025

Data Exchanges Office Hours are available weekly on Tuesday. The session times will alternate weekly between a morning session and an afternoon session.

Access to the Office Hours Submit Question button and Office Hours Question Responses button as well as a button providing connection to the Office Hours session can be found in Knowledge Hub > Communications Hub > Upcoming Events.

Office Hours Schedule

• Tuesday, November 26, 10:30 - noon ET, open Forum

• Tuesday, December 3, 1:00 - 2:30 pm ET, EdData Dashboards

• Tuesday, December 10, 10:30 - noon ET, Graduate

• Tuesday, December 17, 1:00 - 2:30 pm ET, open forum

• Tuesday, December 31, 10:30 - noon ET, open forum

From Office of Accountability

NEW: 2024 Federal Accountability Now Available

2024 federal accountability will be released to all public schools in the accountability portal, today, Friday November 22. Given the resolution of technical issues, this will re-start the three-week review period. Issues should be submitted through a data audit. Information regarding submitting a federal accountability audit can be found in Moodle in the School Accountability & Accreditation Community in the Federal Accountability System/Audit Information folder. The deadline to submit a federal accountability audit is now Friday, December 13. Contact IDOE's Office of Accountability with any questions.

From Office of Information Technology

Public Attendance Insights Dashboard 

A public version of the Attendance Insights Dashboard is now available.  This report joins other public reports on the EdData platform. The public version of the Attendance Insights dashboard allows comparison of attendance patterns between schools and against state data. The data will display for the 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024 school years. Contact IDOE’s Office of Information Technology with additional questions.

Key Contact Display in LINK Portal

Key contacts, including the roles of superintendent, financial contact, special education director, principal, Data Exchange contact, etc., are now displayed within the LINK Portal for all users to view. After logging into the LINK Portal, click on the “Contacts” tab at the top of the screen to view. Search for your organization and then click on the “Full Directory” link. If you are a Key Contact for your organization, please review this information for accuracy. Information for how these data are provided to IDOE is included below. 

 Designation of Key Contacts

Security coordinators for all traditional public, charter, and accredited non-public schools are responsible for ensuring their organization’s key contacts for the 2024-2025 school year are set. Key contacts, including the roles of Superintendent, Financial Contact, Special Education Director, Principal, Data Exchange Contact, etc., are needed for the 2024-2025 school year even if those contacts were provided last school year. 

For school corporations that have an Ed-Fi student information system (SIS), key contacts and other staff role assignments should be entered and managed in the local SIS, and then provided to DEX/LINK for the new school year. However, all three options below are available:

1. Provide staff classifications in the local SIS per the vendor’s instructions,

2. Add a staff type manually for the 2024-2025 school year via the Security Portal, or

3. Upload templates 008_StaffAssociation_StaffEdOrgAssignmentAssociation and 009_StaffOrganizationContactAssociation into DEX. 

Schools utilizing options two and three may cause overriding or loss of data. Schools should connect with their SIS vendor to better understand how to avoid data loss when providing data via multiple methods. IDOE is now recognizing only the 2024-2025 school year assignments. Security coordinator instructions can be found here. Contact IDOE’s Data Exchange Team with any questions.

TIDE Roster Updates

We have learned that students will not be updated to TIDE rosters if the Student Demographic data is not complete. Where appropriate, the fields that must be amended to the Student Demographic record are Language, Race, ML Proficiency level, EL Instrument Used, Birth Country, Address, Address Begin Date, Address End Date, Email Address.

If a student has not updated to the TIDE roster, navigate to the Review page in DEX, activate the filter and enter the STN for the missing student then download the resource. Most likely there will be missing data on this record. Once this data has been provided to DEX for the student the TIDE roster should be updated within 24-48 hours.

InView Tile No Longer Available

Please utilize the GPS webpage to find the data you are looking for. Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS)

STN Application Center Retirement

IDOE will be retiring the STN Application Center by the end of March, 2025. This system is being replaced by newer systems including Data Exchange, Ed-ID, a new Choice Voucher Application, and an EdData report called Student Data Backpack. Local data administrators should login to the STN Application Center and download any certified roster data that your school requires under Administration > Retrieve Data, as historic data will not be available via any tool in the future. IDOE’s Data Exchange Team is also compiling feedback on which current-year reports are still being utilized by Data Administrators for state reporting purposes, other than the STN Lookup. Please submit this information here. Contact the Data Exchange Team with any questions.