CALPADS Update Flash #296

To:           Local Educational Agency (LEA) Representatives

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

Date:      March 20, 2025

Subject:  CALPADS Update FLASH #296

SSID Match Tool Enhancements

The Statewide Student Identifier (SSID) Match Tool that was introduced in August 2022 continues to be refined so that better matches are returned. The CALPADS Team now strongly recommends that local educational agencies (LEAs) first use the SSID Match Tool to look for SSIDs for new or transferring students and recommends populating those SSIDs before submitting Student Enrollment (SENR) records to CALPADS. If LEAs do not first look to see whether students already have SSIDs in CALPADS, and then submit an SENR record with no SSID, CALPADS automatically assigns a new SSID, potentially creating a multiple identifier (MID) anomaly that the LEA will then have to resolve.

While it is always a good practice to avoid the creation of MIDs, it is particularly important now, while LEAs are in the assessment windows for both the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments and the Summative English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). This is because students tested under two different SSIDs require manual cleanup when the SSIDs are later merged.

How the SSID Match Tool Works

The matches are scored (ranked) on the following data elements, with Birth Year being the highest value and Birth Day the lowest:

• Birth Year
• First Name
• Last Name
• Middle Name
• Birth Month
• Birth Day

The higher the rank, the more impact the data has on the match score. Less deviation is allowed for fields with a higher rank.

Perfect matches maximize the match score, and variations reduce the match score. For example, the further away the potential match student’s birth date is from the submitted student’s birth date, the lower the score.

If the Middle Name is populated on the submitted request record but absent on the potential match, the Middle Name is not included in the scoring, and vice versa.

If the Middle Name is included in the First Name field on the request record but populated in the Middle Name field on the potential match, the likelihood of a match is greatly reduced. As a best practice, the name fields should be populated as they are represented on the legal documents that are used to verify a student’s identity.

Using the SSID Match Tool is More Effective and Efficient

Looking up students individually in Online Maintenance is time consuming. Using the regular SENR submission (with blank SSID fields in the file) potentially creates Multiple Identifier (MID) anomalies. Utilizing the SSID Match Tool instead of these two methods alleviates these issues.

New Training Video Available

A new training video on the SSID Match Tool is posted on the California School Information Services (CSIS) Training Channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsnFpLOXpp4JL5IOLtlNe5e03Erhk7MhZ.

If the SSID Match Tool does not return an expected match, please submit a Service Request via the CALPADS Service Request Form: https://www2.cde.ca.gov/calpadshelp/.