September 15, 2020 | General News
The Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) identified an issue with district course data that is used to calculate school performance indicators. Because students can take multiple sections of the exact same course at the same time, e.g. “Learning Lab,” and if they receive the same grade in those courses there is no way for the WDE to identify if the course is a duplicate or a legitimate double section of it. An unintended consequence is that a student may be shorted on their credit count for accountability. In the past, the WDE has tried to resolve this issue by having districts update their reporting and renaming the courses differently. WDE staff have observed that this error continues to occur and therefore, have identified another solution.
The WDE worked with the Student Information System vendors (PowerSchool and Infinite Campus) and the Wyoming Transcript Center to add two new fields to the WDE949 and WDE950 StudentCourses.csv file. The fields, ‘localSectionId’ and ‘stateCourseId’ are already stored within your Student Information System. If you are a PowerSchool user these changes were included in State Reporting Version 20.8.2.0 that was made available on August 19, 2020. If you are an Infinite Campus User this update was made in release 2036, made available on August 31, 2020.
The National Student Clearinghouse, the vendor that manages the Wyoming Transcript Center (WTC), will make the change to their system on September 29. Because the change is occurring during the WDE949/WDE950 collection window (September 16 - October 16) districts will have a choice of when to submit.
Option One - Submit During the September 15 - 28 Window
Districts that have not upgraded its student information systems to the newest version or have already uploaded transcripts to WTC will have .csv files that do not contain the two new fields. Therefore, districts may want to submit district data prior to the WTC upgrade date, September 29, so the files are accepted without error. If districts submit a corrected file after this date, the district will have to manually alter the studentCourse.csv file to include the new headers, or the district will have to repopulate the files with an upgraded SIS system and reload them in the WTC prior to sending them to the WDE. To avoid altering the headers, work with Elizabeth Foster to ensure the data is error-free prior to September 29. Liz can be reached at elizabeth.foster@wyo.gov.
Districts that have already upgraded its SIS can submit during this window, but personnel will have to manually remove the two new columns from the StudentCourse.csv file in order to successfully submit.
Option Two - Submit During the October 2 - 16 Window
Districts that have upgraded its SIS to the most recent versions and did not load the transcripts in the WTC prior to the WTC upgrade can submit the transcripts on or after October 2, 2020. If a district is a member of this group, the WDE is looking for one PowerSchool user and one Infinite Campus user to test the system on September 30. If your district would like to volunteer, contact John Paul at john.paul@wyo.gov.
The WDE asks that no one, other than our two pilot districts, send transcripts to the WDE on September 29 and 30.
Below is the revised Student Courses.csv file layout. The two new fields have an asterisk next to them.
File layouts and guidebooks for both types of submissions are posted on edu.wyoming.gov/data/dcs/. Click the arrow next to the WDE949 or WDE950 and select the documents tab. For questions about the Wyoming Transcript Center or the WDE949 or WDE950 data collections email Liz Foster at elizabeth.foster@wyo.gov.
The Information Management Division (IMD) has added the WDE684 validations into the Wyoming Interoperable Data System (WINDS) and is working with our six volunteer districts to identify ways to improve the validation tool display and error message readability. Over the next few weeks, volunteer districts will respond to a weekly survey, providing feedback to improve the system before it is released to all districts.
The IMD will present the dashboard to the remaining 42 districts at the virtual Student Information System Conference (SIS) October 26 and 27. After the presentation, the validations will be turned on and all districts will start to receive daily email messages when WDE684 fatal errors are identified.
At that time the IMD would like districts to using the diagnotics provided in the dashboard to identify and resolve these errors within their SISes and to review forthcoming data reports that will compare their WDE684 submissions against the data collected through WINDS. This is so the IMD can incorporate feedback from all districts to ensure that data is accurately captured before the fall of 2021.
The IMD hopes to repeat this process with the WDE638 and WDE600 business rules later in the year.
If you haven't done so yet, please schedule your course code review meeting with Susan Williams. It is the department's goal to have had the initial meeting with all districts by the end of February. The WDE has openings November 2 - February 26.
Districts are encouraged to include curriculum coordinators, student information system (SIS) managers, and any personnel who enter course information in your SIS. Districts will be required to use the state approved course codes in the 2021-22 school year.
Through this review we hope to accomplish the following:
- Ensure districts are using the appropriate SCED code to describe their courses.
- Eliminate the use of ambiguous course codes.
- Help the state to identify areas where SCED codes don't meet the districts needs to help with the creation of Wyoming specific course codes.
For more information, contact Susan Williams at 307-777-6252 or susan.williams@wyo.gov.
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September 15-October 15: WDE949 & WDE950 collection window (revised collection dates)
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October 26-27: SIS User Conference - Virtual Meeting
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November 2-13: Alternative School Fall Climate Survey Window
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