ALMA STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM CERTIFIED

We have been notified that the ALMA SIS is now Indiana Ed-Fi Certified to report DEX data for the 2024-2025 school year.

Employability Skills and Postsecondary-Readiness Guidance

Schools must provide both Employability Skills and Postsecondary-Readiness Competency data together. Schools cannot provide one data without the other.

• AchievementCategoryDescriptor "N/A or Did not Demonstrate" is allowed to be submitted for all the diploma levels before 2023 cohort.

• AchievementCategoryDescriptor "N/A or Did not Demonstrate" is not allowed to be submitted for all the diploma levels except “6”(Certificate of Completion (IEP program Completed) and “7”(Course Completion) on or after 2023 cohort.

Data Exchange Discipline Reporting Reminder

Thursday, May 23, 2024, IDOE deployed final updates to the discipline roster, discipline summary grid, and one additional validation (ES-12) where discipline action records are being provided with no identified discipline incident or incident behavior records.

Items to note:

• Data Exchange will NOT have the discipline roster available to school staff on the validation tab. The roster WILL be available on the certify tab. This roster is the same and this roster will need to be utilized by school staff for troubleshooting their validation messages. IDOE support team will also use this roster when assisting the schools. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The roster will be available in the 2024-2025 school year.

• Arrest data reported in conjunction with a suspension or expulsion (action) and not reported as a separate record will be counted for certification by utilizing the arrest on/off property information. Schools will not find this information on the discipline roster as we did not have a field for arrest on/off property built in. We will be making updates to the roster to assist with this concern next school year. However, it is expected for schools to report the arrest data as a separate record. (This can be found in the ODS discipline action records and support team can assist as needed if a school feels their counts are inaccurate)

• Criminal gang related events was not added to the roster and this was an oversight on my part. We will be making updates to the roster for next school year. (This can be found in the ODS student discipline incident behavior records and support team can assist as needed if a school feels their counts are inaccurate)

Discipline Rule ES-8 and ES-12 Triggering

Many schools are finding that they have student discipline records triggering ES-8 and ES-12. ES-8 is triggering because the Student Discipline Action record has missing data. Pay special attention to Column Q, IncidentIdentifier. When this field is blank ES-8 triggers and in turn ES-12 triggers because the assumption is that there is no Discipline Incident record for the student.

To find the Incident Identifier, download from the Review page the Student Discipline Incident Behavior resource and locate the STN of the student to find the Incident ID.

Course Outcomes, Method Credit Types - Summer School 2023 data vs Summer School 2024 Data

Method Credit Type Summer School credit should be reported for summer schools courses taken during the summer of 2023.

All courses taken during the summer 2024 must be reported with one of the Participation Method Credit Types per legislative decision.

Data Exchange Office Hours - Final 2024 Session

The final School Office Hours session for the 2024 school year is scheduled for Tuesday, June 4, 2024 begins at 10:30 am ET and ends 12:00 pm ET. This office hours session will be an open forum.

The link to join the Office Hours session and the link to the jot form can be found in Data Exchange Knowledge Hub > Communications Hub > Upcoming Events. You will need to use the links listed under School Office Hours.

From Office of Accountability

NEW: Attendance Submissions in Data Exchange

Please check attendance data in Data Exchange by going to the Certification tab and then Attendance to ensure that the 162 day count is accurate. Check the number of students in the ‘Eligible Student Count >= 162 days’ column for accuracy and work to fix any errors in the attendance submission immediately. Contact IDOE’s Office of Accountability with any questions.

 NEW: 2024 Cohort Locking Soon

The 2024 cohort will lock on Friday, June 28. Please check cohort reports for accuracy and pay special attention to any students with an Unknown Cohort status. The Unknown Cohort status is a dropout status and counts against the graduation rate. Many Unknown Cohort statuses can be fixed by the school/corporation via data entries. Specific details about the causes of the Unknown Cohort status and what to do about it can be found in the Unknown Cohort Status webinar and the accompanying slides found on Moodle. The case-sensitive enrollment key for the Moodle community is AccountabilityCommunity. Contact IDOE’s Office of Accountability with any questions.

REMINDER: 2024-2025 Corporation Amendments

The 2024-2025 school year corporation amendment window is open through Friday, August 30. Corporations and schools with school profile changes should submit a corporation amendment request with supporting documentation via Jotform. Information regarding submission can be found here. Corporations and schools without any school profile changes do not need to submit a request. Contact IDOE’s Office of Accountability with any questions.

Reporting Good Cause Exemptions to IDOE

Beginning 4/5/2024, the Indiana Department of Education will be accepting submissions for Good Cause Exemptions (GCE’s) for IREAD exclusively through the Data Exchange.  The current process using the JotForm is closed as of 4/4/24.  Good Cause Exemptions will be reported exclusively through the Data Exchange (See How to Report student Good Cause Exemptions). A short excerpt from this guidance page is provided below. 

Note: GCEs can only be applied for an eligible student who has participated in at least one IREAD-3 administration and after a review of valid test results. An undetermined score that does not provide a scale score is not considered valid. Grade two students who do not receive a passing score must retest in grade three, and are not eligible to receive a GCE after their first administration.

As Good Cause Exemptions are reported to the IDOE, we will regularly update the IREAD-3 and ILEARN Report - Current Enrollment report on Ed-Data so schools can see the status of their current students with regard to their exemption status. Questions on reporting GCE’s through Data Exchange can be directed to http://help.doe.in.gov

CC-17 Error Message Re-Deployed 5/23/24

Error message CC-17 Student not counted for course outcomes. Method credit earned must be provided on student course transcript record has been deployed. The deployment of this new message will likely have increased the number of Course Outcome validation messages that are triggered. It is suggested that a review of the Course Transcript ODS (DEX Review page) resource be downloaded to locate records where the “MethodCreditEarned” field is blank. Populating these blank fields will resolve the errors.

Method credit earned is a required datapoint for all grade levels whether the course is credit bearing or not. Guidance for reporting Method Credit earned is provided here How to Report Student Academic Record (Course Outcomes) | How to Report Method Credit Earned .

To review, navigate in DEX to the Review page and select the Course Transcript resource. If the “MethodCreditEarnedDescriptor” field is blank, the error will trigger.

Upcoming Changes for Summer School Reporting

Addition of three method credit types for all courses students are engaged with a Summer School method designation

1. Summer Participation 49% or less

2. Summer Participation 50% to 89%

3. Summer Participation 90% or more

Reasons for the addition of the Summer Participation methods:

• Alignment between reported students on the summer school finance side and reported outcomes on the course side.

• Determining number of students involved in any type of summer school.

• Determining students who participated in summer school non-credit bearing instruction with a literacy focus--what were their participation rates vs. assessment outcomes in the next assessment window.