CALPADS Update Flash #276

To:           Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives

From:      California Department of Education (CDE) –
                California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) Team

Date:       June 13, 2024

Subject:  CALPADS Update FLASH #276

This Flash provides guidance and updates on the following:

• How to enroll students with disabilities (SWDs) who are being initially evaluated for special education services when all needed demographic data are not available.
• The plan for addressing over-triggering of Certification Data Discrepancy (CDD) PLAN0637E4 - Eligible and Participating student on an Education Plan is not currently enrolled.
• Explanation for including students exited in prior year in current year End-of-Year 4 Reports 16.22 and 16.23.

Enrollment Information for Students with Disabilities Being Initially Evaluated for Special Education Services

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part B Program, local educational agencies (LEA) are required to evaluate students for special education services no more than 60 days after parental consent for evaluation is obtained. Although a statewide student identifier (SSID) is required to submit the required special education files from the special education data system (SEDS) to CALPADS, the ability to obtain an SSID for a student should never impede the evaluation of a child or student with disabilities. LEAs should conduct the evaluation even if an SSID has not been obtained at the time of the evaluation.

Because the SSID is required to submit special education data to CALPADS, it will be necessary to eventually obtain an SSID through the creation of an enrollment in CALPADS. When creating these enrollments in the local student information system (SIS), certain SIS vendors may require the full demographic profile of a student to create the enrollment. However, often the necessary information to complete the full demographic profile has not or cannot be obtained from the parents of the student being evaluated. Therefore, the CDE Special Education Division would like to make the following recommendations:

If possible, special education staff should:

1. Have parents/guardians complete the standard enrollment form required for students enrolling in the LEA to obtain all the necessary demographic data,

OR

In cases where it is not possible to obtain all necessary demographic data, have parents/guardians complete a paper form as part of the evaluation process that minimally collects the following information: Student Legal First Name

• Student Legal Last Name
• Student Birth Date
• Student Gender
• Student Hispanic Ethnicity Indicator
• Student Race(s)
• Parent/Guardian Highest Education Level (for both parents/guardians if more than one)
  
  

2. Provide the information obtained through the evaluation process to the SIS coordinator to obtain the SSID and enrollment in CALPADS.

Student information system staff should:

1. If the full demographic profile for the student is available, assist in obtaining an SSID for the student being evaluated for special education by creating an enrollment in the student information system and submitting that enrollment to CALPADS;

OR

If only a partial demographic profile is available and some of the required student demographic information is not available, obtain an SSID through the CALPADS Online Maintenance tool using the minimum data required to obtain an SSID which includes the following fields:

• 1.04 – Reporting LEA
• 1.05 – School of Attendance
• 1.06 – School of Attendance Nonpublic School (NPS), (only if student is enrolled at an NPS School)
• 1.07 – Academic Year
• 1.09 – Local Student ID (district identifier assigned by student information system)
• 1.10 – Student Legal First Name
• 1.12 – Student Legal Last Name
• 1.17 – Student Birth Date
• 1.18 – Student Gender Code
• 1.22 – Enrollment Start Date
• 1.23 – Enrollment Status Code
• 1.24 – Grade Level Code
  

2. For students missing demographic information, continue working with special education data coordinators to obtain the remaining demographic information required for creating the enrollment, and upload that data to CALPADS when obtained,

OR

For students for whom the full profile cannot be obtained, upload the available demographic data to CALPADS, and for any missing data, upload the following values indicating the data are missing or unknown:

• 2.22 Student Birth Country Code = UU – Unknown
• 2.24 Student Ethnicity Missing Indicator = Y
• 2.30 Student Race Missing Indicator = Y
• 2.38 Parent Guardian 1 Highest Education Level Code = U – Unknown
• 2.50 Parent Guardian2 Highest Education Level Code = U – Unknown

Note: Special education staff should note that students with missing race or ethnicity data will be counted in the “Two or More Races” federal race category which could potentially impact disproportionality calculations.

PLAN0637E4 - Eligible and Participating student on an Education Plan is not currently enrolled will be permanently disabled

The Certification Data Discrepancy (CDD) PLAN0637E4 - Eligible and Participating student on an Education Plan is not currently enrolled – was disabled shortly after it was initially released as a CDD because it was over-triggering for students who 1) had a Special Education Status of 1 – Eligible and Participating and 2) had not reenrolled for the 2023−24 academic year.

The over-triggering was caused primarily by Students with Disabilities Status (SWDS) records with Special Education Statuses of 1 – Eligible and Participating that were created during the data creation phase of the special education file redesign to facilitate data conversion. To address the issue, the California Department of Education (CDE) will permanently disable this validation for both the End-of-Year (EOY) 4 and Fall 1 data submissions, and instead update the errant records once the 2023−24 EOY submission amendment window closes. The CDE will evaluate the data in the CALPADS Operational Data Store (ODS) and update SWDS records for any student who still has not re-enrolled and whose Special Education Status is 1 – Eligible and Participating (created for the redesign) by submitting a subsequent Special Education Status of 3 – Eligible Not Enrolled with an effective start date of July 1, 2023. Updating these records will significantly decrease the number of students with records that were previously triggering PLAN0637E4.

Additionally, rather than reinstating this CDD for 2024−25 Fall 1, the CALPADS and Special Education teams will work collaboratively to develop an ODS report (similar to the Exit Reason Discrepancy anomaly report) that will give LEAs visibility into anomalies and inconsistencies between students’ Special Education Statuses (e.g., Eligible and Participating, Eligible, Not Participating, etc.) and Nonparticipation Reasons as compared to students’ Exit Categories and School Completion Statuses from their enrollment record in CALPADS.

Students Exited in Prior Year Included on End-of-Year 4 Reports 16.22 and 16.23

Certification reports 16.22 – Students with Disabilities Special Education Status and Non-Participation Reason – Count and supporting report 16.23 - Students with Disabilities Special Education Status and Non-Participation Reason – Student List are now available in production. The intent of these reports is to assist LEAs in verifying counts and details for students by Special Education Status (e.g., Eligible and Participating, Eligible, Not Participating, etc.) and their Non-Participation Reasons. In particular, the reports seek to assist LEAs to verify counts of students who, at some point during the 2023−24 academic year, were exited from special education with any of the following Special Education Statuses:

• 2 – Eligible, Not Participating
• 3 – Eligible, Not Enrolled
• 4 – Not Eligible

It should be noted that these reports will always include students with any of the above special education statuses with Status Effective Start Dates from May 15 through June 30 of the prior school year. These students are included because oftentimes these changes in Special Education Status occur after the enrollments for these students have been exited in the prior academic year, and these students would not have been reflected on the prior year’s exit report. To ensure that these students are reflected as exiting special education on a certification report, these statuses that fall between these dates will always appear on the report LEAs are certifying for the current year.