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California Charters, Stay Calm and Focus on Your LCAP Submission and the 2019 Dashboard!

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By Jennifer Reyes, Ed.d., Educational Support Services Manager; Chris Lim, Senior Director of Data Management; and Annice Weinstein, Senior Manager, Assessment Data and Analysis 

April 16, 2019

California charter leaders, as you enter the last few months of the school year, pay attention to these important tasks to help you stay on top of your LCAP submission as well as ensure accurate reporting on the 2019 Dashboard.

CALPADS Submissions and the Dashboard

Demographic data reported to CALPADS informs the subgroup information reported on the CA School Dashboard. The CA Department of Education (CDE) typically extracts this information shortly after CAASPP testing is completed, so review the 8.1 ODS report in CALPADS to be sure the right demographic information is reported for each student: race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, homeless, foster, English learner, and disability status. For corrections, update the information in your student information system (SIS) first, then push an updated extract up to CALPADS, so the original source of your data (your SIS) is accurate and matches what’s in CALPADS.

We also recommend you push up an enrollment update to CALPADS prior to testing to make sure all students enrolled at your school are represented in TOMS.

The end-of-year submissions (EOY 1, 2, and 3) provide information on program eligibility, chronic absenteeism, suspension rate, and other disciplinary incidents, as well as college and career readiness. EOY information is also used to determine graduation rates along with cumulative enrollment, which the CDE uses to determine which students will factor into each of the Dashboard calculations.

LCAP Annual Update

Coordinate with your staff to gather the data necessary to update all the measurable outcomes defined in your LCAP. You’ll notice that some of the measures may be a year old (SBAC scores or graduation rate from 2017-18),but do your best to gather current data when available (example: local assessment data). Gathering the data early will give you a chance to share progress with your stakeholders and get their feedback, as well as use the data to determine if the actions or services you implemented are showing the results you anticipated. If they aren’t, this is the perfect time to update your plans in the 2019-20 LCAP.

If you haven’t been coding your finances to align with your LCAP goals, actions, and services throughout the year, you’ll need to start reviewing your general ledger to identify how each of the expenses line up with your LCAP. The Annual Update requires you to include your estimated actual expenditures for each action/service, including the funding source (base, supplemental/concentration, title funds, CSI), so this task can take some time.

It’s also a good time to start planning for that final round of stakeholder engagement prior to Board approval.  This will allow you to get quality input on your draft LCAP so that your entire school community is represented in the plan.  You will be able to include these efforts in the stakeholder engagement section and show that you are meeting this LCAP requirement.

One last item to start preparing is your responses to how you’ve addressed each of the local indicators. You will need to present the information at a regularly scheduled board meeting either at the end of this school year or the start of the next school year. Your overall score – Standard Met or Standard Not Met – will be entered by your Dashboard Coordinator next fall, but since you will be including that information in the LCAP Annual Update, it makes sense to prepare your narratives for the Dashboard local indicator reporting at the end of 2018-19.

The end of the school year will be here before we know it! We recommend planning ahead and allotting time to get these items right, as they have a significant impact on your school. For additional questions on the LCAP, Dashboard, or CALPADS submissions, please contact LCAP360@edtec.com.

CALPADS Update for CA Charter Schools

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By Gerald Cockrell, Data and Categorical Program Specialist

September 19, 2018

For California charter schools, it can be hard to stay on top of all the changes to CALPADS. Use the list below as an easy checklist to make sure your school isn’t forgetting anything this year. Check out our previous CALPADS post to see our list of the most important CALPADS reports to prepare for Fall 1.

Important Changes to CALPADS for the 18/19 School Year

  • There are new CALPADS submission certification deadlines for ‘18-‘19 and they are much earlier than previous years. Please plan accordingly, especially for the Fall 1 submission which now ends around Thanksgiving instead of the end of January.
    • Fall 1 Certification Deadline: 11/21/18
    • Fall 1 Amendment Window Deadline: 12/7/18
    • Fall 2 Certification Deadline: 2/1/19 (No Amendment Window)
    • EOY 1 – EOY 3 Certification Deadline: 8/17/19 (No Amendment Window)
  • In addition to the shorter submission windows CALPADS also has a significant outage planned for 9/21-10/01 to make major system changes. Please plan accordingly. It’s also important to get any SSID’s or other information from CALPADS you may need for assessment or ELPAC testing.
  • New students with a non-English primary language must have an ‘18-‘19 enrollment record and a “TBD” SELA record in CALPADS in order for them to show up in TOMS and be tested with the Initial ELPAC.
  • This update is not new, but it is important enough to warrant an annual reminder: all National School Lunch Program (NSLP) Free and Reduced Price Meal (FRPM) applications for the year MUST BE RECEIVED BY 10/31/18 for the student eligibility to count towards your official FRPM or LCFF Unduplicated counts.

To help you prepare for Fall 1 and make sure your charter school’s data is accurate for funding and accountability, check out our previous CALPADS post about the most important CALPADS reports.

We Need Proof: Capture & Demonstrate Student Performance across a Data Spectrum

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by Annice Weinstein, Senior Manager, Assessment Data and Analysis 

May 23, 2018

With so much going on at your charter school on a day-to-day basis, it can be difficult to remember what data your staff needs to track throughout the year. This data is necessary to stay on top of accountability requirements and be able to demonstrate student performance to your stakeholders, as well as for your LCAP, charter renewal, WASC, and grants. This article takes a step-by-step approach to help you evaluate your data needs and establish processes for collecting that data.

Start with your Charter

When your school’s founding team wrote the charter, they laid the foundation for what the school aims to accomplish, student performance goals, and how it plans to measure its progress over the duration of the charter period. Because your LCAP is an annual reflection of the school’s performance and plan for improvement, aligning the goals and measurable pupil outcomes in your LCAP to your charter is critical. This will also save you time when you renew your charter, as aligning the two documents is a requirement for renewal.

As a next step, you’ll need to track progress towards the measurable outcomes you set in your LCAP. For example, if one of your student performance goals is that all students enrolled at your school since ninth grade will graduate and be accepted to college, then you need to have processes in place to track progress towards graduation requirements and college acceptance rates. To accomplish this, you could assign a member of your data team to collaborate with the school’s guidance counselors and college counselors to determine the best way to gather this information. If one of your metrics for academic achievement is that all students enrolled at your school since kindergarten will be reading on grade level by the end of 3rd grade, then you need to have processes in place to track reading levels for a cohort of students over time.

Data Integrity

You won’t be able to evaluate your progress and student performance toward LCAP goals and tell your school’s story without consistent, reliable data. What’s more, your CALPADS data will be used to calculate the CA School Dashboard state indicators, so it’s extremely important that it’s complete and accurate. Review all CALPADS certification reports carefully. Take the time to download all student-level state test results from TOMS, CELDT, ELPAC, and testing systems to a safe place at your school. The data may not always be available to download when you need it; for example, TOMS only houses two historical years of data.

For all local test data, make sure to include student IDs so you can calculate longitudinal progress. Include proficiency levels where applicable to make it easy to determine the percentage of students on grade level or meeting the standard. Make sure the team in charge of data at your school is aware of the important role they play in compliance requirements and storytelling, and work with them to establish standard processes for tracking and reporting all data. You’ll want to make sure that everyone involved in these processes is kept informed of critical updates and timelines.

Use Data to Tell Your Story

CA School Dashboard Indicators

When it comes time to tell your story, it’s important to present the school’s performance in a clear, honest, effective way. In addition to the good news, you’ll also need to communicate dips in performance and indications of achievement gaps. You can use your Dashboard indicators to identify achievement gaps by identifying any student groups performing two or more levels below the school’s overall performance. You should also be prepared to explain how you are using data to assist in improving performance or closing the achievement gap.

Your Dashboard indicators are also useful for identifying and highlighting progress in student performance, such as an improvement in the test performance of English Learners. Whenever possible, try to identify specific programs or lack of programs that can be tied to progress or setbacks; this will weave a thorough story and set the stage for you to provide related recommendations about the best way to allocate resources going forward.

Local Metrics

You can also use local metrics to highlight your school’s performance. If you’ve had success in a particular area, you’ll want to make sure to share this with your stakeholders. Here are a few examples of metrics that might make sense for your school to track and report:

  • College Application, Acceptance, or College-Going Rate
  • AP Course Enrollment or AP Pass Rate
  • GPA
  • Participation in Programs (extracurricular activities, arts & science programs, leadership)
  • SAT/ACT Scores
  • Fundraising Success
  • Community Service Hours
  • Re-Enrollment Rate or Waitlist Count (to indicate satisfaction with or interest in your school)
  • Results of Parent/Student Surveys

Performance Analysis

There are two main ways to demonstrate student performance when telling your school’s story: longitudinal progress and comparison view. The longitudinal view compares performance for the same set of students over time. The comparison view shows school-wide performance by grade level or subgroup compared to demographically similar, resident, or district schools. When comparing performance, be sure to select comparison schools based on specific criteria such as similar demographics or geographic proximity. In the end, it all goes back to data integrity, as both views depend on access to complete, accurate data.

Summary

The most effective way to prepare to demonstrate student performance at your school is to outline a data collection strategy and plan. Make sure the relevant staff are on the same page regarding your school’s goals and implementation of those goals, so you are capturing the information you need to tell a powerful story. Schedule time throughout the school year to review progress on the measures established in your LCAP, accurately maintain your CALPADS data, and thoroughly understand your Dashboard. All of this will prepare you to explain both the progress and struggles reflected in your data.

Find out more about EdTec’s Student Performance Services.

Keep Calm and Review Your CALPADS Reports!

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By Gerald Cockrell, Data and Categorical Program Specialist

November 13, 2017

Given the large amount of data reported for CALPADS Fall I, and the multitude of certification reports available, it can be difficult to determine which data are the most important and where to find them!  To help ease the frustration, we’ve created a list of the most important reports and included detail about the information each report contains and who should be reviewing them.

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There are many other reports available as well, but starting with the ones listed in this table will provide a clear view of the data that affect your funding and accountability.  As a reminder, special attention should be paid to FRPM data, EL data, and high school graduate data.

If you have any concerns about the data being reported for Fall I, feel free to reach out to EdTec’s data team to discuss how we can help. You can reach Gerald at gerald.cockrell@edtec.com, or 213.292. 6620 x414.