The Indiana Department of Education has released a dashboard (October Certification Dashboard) now available to all schools for the purpose of showing trends in this year’s data compared to last year’s data. School users can access this report in EdData and use it to compare how this year’s October numbers are trending compared to the data certified in the prior year.  It is critical for school leaders and their data teams to review these reports since they help detect anomalies which can only be evaluated at the local level.  Data trends are available for Pupil Enrollment, Graduation (fall graduates for 2024-25), Membership, Multilingual Learners, Course Outcomes (Summer 2025) Staff Employment, and school  Calendars.  We appreciate your careful attention to submitting and certifying accurate data.  This approach is part of our overall effort to avoid post certification corrections which are always much more difficult to address. We hope this helps you to be ready to sign-off on your October 1st count data as soon as certification opens on October 7, 2025. If there are questions, please contact us at http://help.doe.in.gov .

If the ME-50 validation error is triggering for your LEA, the new fields added to the Virtual Program record have not been completed. Three new fields were added to the Virtual Program record beginning in 2026 to identify how a student is receiving their virtual education with service begin and end date. The code value options for the Virtual program records are 3rd Party Educator, LEA Educator, LEA and 3rd Party Educator. A begin date is required for the service and and an end date when the service changes or student is no longer educated virtually. A check of the Student Program Associations resource on the DEX Review page will allow you to see the Virtual program record. Scrolling all the way to the right of the page you will find the Code Value field as well as the begin and end dates. Updated guidance has been posted to Knowledge Hub > School Support Hub > Reporting Guides > Membership > How to Report Students in Virtual Education.

The following items are all know concerns related to the GCE errors and are actively being investigated to provide a solution. Please watch Knowledge Known Issues for updates.

• RESOLVED: GCE-1 (Special Education program missing) is triggering for Service Only LEA

• RESOLVED: GCE-7 (Multilingual Learner program missing) is triggering for Service Only LEA

• RESOLVED: GCE-8 is triggering when a student was enrolled in grade 3 in the 2025 school year and exited prior to March 1, 2025.

• GCE-8 is triggering for homeschooled students that receive SE services and have no IREAD test score for the 2025 school year. UPDATE: It is necessary to reach out to lschemel@doe.in.gov for assistance with resolving

• GCE-8 is triggering for homeschooled students that are not receiving SE services but are dual enrolled in a public school. UPDATE: It is necessary to reach out to lschemel@doe.in.gov for assistance with resolving

• GCE-8 is triggering for single-day mobility records for students that are not enrolled in the current school year. UPDATE: this concern has NOT been resolved at this time. We do expect a fix to be deployed September 25, 2025.

REMINDER: Don’t Forget to Check Knowledge Hub for . . .

Change Log - find the Change Log in the School Support Hub to find guidance documentation that has been updated for the 2026 school year.

DEX Reporting in Development - find the DEX Reporting in Development log in the Communications Hub for the 2026 school year. This log is provided to inform schools of items that are currently under consideration, approved for development, in development, or deployed to DEX.

Known & Resolved Issues - find the Known & Resolved Issues log in the Communications Hub of Knowledge Hub for the 2026 school year. This log provides the status of Known Issues related to DEX reporting.

Office hours sessions are currently being scheduled with specific topics and open forum sessions. Please refer to the Calendar on the Upcoming Events page in Knowledge Hub. As the new school year begins, Office Hours sessions will again be offered on Tuesday and Thursday on certain weeks to accommodate Business Owner sessions on specific data sets.

Tuesday, 9/16/25 - 1:00 - 2:30 pm - Calendar, Attendance, Pupil Enrollment - Vanessa Bachle Video and slide deck are posted to Knowledge Hub Tutorials for Calendar, Attendance, and Pupil Enrollment

Thursday, 10/23/25 - 10:30 - 12:00 - Alternative Education - Penelope Bell Update: Video and slide deck has been posted to Knowledge Hub> School Support Hub > Reporting Guides > Alternative Education > Tutorials

Tuesday, 9/23/25 - 10:30 - 12:00 pm - open forum

Thursday, 9/25,25 - 10:30 - 12:00 pm - Special Education - Brandon Myers

Tuesday, 9/30/25 - 1:00 - 2:30 pm - open forum

All schools that are subject to the mandatory graduation rate audit of the 2025 cohort have been notified by email. If you did not receive an email and/or are unsure if your school was selected, please check the list of mandatory audit schools (Enrollment key: “AccountabilityCommunity”). Every high school should review their 2025 cohort. If there are students in the 2025 cohort with an incorrect (non-graduate) cohort status, please submit those students on the voluntary graduation rate audit template. All schools are welcome to participate in the voluntary graduation rate audit, and it is the final opportunity to request a change to the 2025 cohort. The mandatory and voluntary graduation rate audits will be open from Wednesday, October 1, through Friday, October 24. Contact IDOE’s Office of Accountability with any questions.

We are working with PowerSchool to schedule time for Data Administrators to learn about the platform and to be introduced to reports which will help schools focus on the data quality issues which need to be solved.  We will communicate this opportunity as soon as it is scheduled.  We may need to do more than one of these so stay tuned.

PowerSchool and IDOE have collaborated on a set of reports now available to all schools to help focus efforts on data clean-up.  These reports will help data teams and special education teams ensure Special Education Program records are flowing daily to IDOE.  The reports are:

• IEP Start and End Dates Need Update

• No Special Education Program Record

If schools have any students on these reports, those student records cannot flow to IDOE.  Thanks to all who have already started to use these reports which were released earlier this week.  We are seeing a healthy improvement already.  Access to these reports for Data Administrators is still being worked out but Special Education personnel already have access. If there are general questions about this approach contact Specialeducation@doe.in.gov

Be advised that the Data Reporting support team is unable to provide guidance or troubleshooting assistance for IDOE Special Programs other than confirming that staff requiring access to the platform have been assigned the 'Student Support Plans” role and that there are two staff assigned the IEP/ILP Support role.

• Each LEA should have 2 staff members setup with the IEP/ILP Support role. These staff are the designated contacts for creating a help ticket for IDOE Special Programs. Tickets can be created at http://help.powerschool.com

• Special Education questions may be sent to SpecialEducation@doe.in.gov

• The Office of Special Education has created Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to assist users of the platform

• Multilingual Learner questions may be sent to englishlearners@doe.in.gov

• Additional resources will be provided in the near future to assist users.

Access to most IDOE applications depend on the accurate role assignment within the LINK Portal. All superintendents and leaders of non-public schools should login to LINK and review/update who their Security Coordinators are.   

• Instructions for organization leaders on how to designate/update the security coordinators is found here. 

• New public and Choice schools setup of the LINK portal is found here. 

• If you are a new superintendent or the organization leader of a non-public school and need the first account configured, please email link@doe.in.gov.

The LINK Portal is able to recognize all public, charter, and accredited non-public schools’ local Google G-Suite or Microsoft 365 accounts. IDOE configures the organization’s leader as the first account, and then this person logs in to designate up to two security coordinators, who are responsible for overseeing the setup of roles for others in the organization.  Contact link@doe.in.gov with any questions.

Security coordinators for all public, charter, and accredited non-public schools are responsible for ensuring their organization’s key contacts for the upcoming school year are set. Required contacts are Superintendent, Principal, Special Education Director, and Chief Technology Officer. Additional contact descriptors can be found here. 

LINK roles, including the key contacts, are designed to be sent from the local Student Information System (SIS) to Data Exchange/LINK. When a person has an account in the local SIS, this is where the LINK roles should be set, according to the SIS instructions. Otherwise, when the staff classifications are resynched/resent to Data Exchange/LINK, they will replace any roles set with what is in the SIS. 

• Security Coordinator Instructions can be found here. 

• ICHAMP (Indiana Complaint, Hearings and Mediation Process) will utilize the following LINK key contacts: Superintendent and Special Education Director. It is essential that these two key contacts are reviewed by security coordinators and updated based on any necessary changes. 

A list of key contacts assigned may be found here.