=================================================================== == STUREC(c) Windows XP v0.97 w/TSDL == == BUILD DATE: 05/18/2012 == =================================================================== 05/18/12 - Several minor adjustments for your perusal. 05/10/12 - Fixed a type in Menu:6.5. that would prevent the 'Last Attended' report from printing the detail records. 05/08/12 - Fixed a typographical error / misspelling you would get when you tried to print Grade Input forms at Menu:3.1. Another and possibly final(?) adjustment relating to attendance. This time to the hours between tests when the test dates span more than one enrollment period. 05/04/12 - No new News on the MAERS Attendance front. Everyone who tested is reporting accurate results. Finally, eh! New variation on an old set of reports. Menu:7.5.6. Demographic Lister, we added 'Children' taken from the MAERS Enrollment Panel. Try it and see if you can use it. Also added the ability to directly enter an updated address for a student if the MSDS record does not match the current master address. Because of the way STUREC(c) creates the MSDS records, this will allow you to 'fix' mismatches. 05/03/12 - Ok, one more time... 05/02/12 - Absolutely the LAST we are going to mess about with attendance! Ba' humbug. 05/01/12 - We invite you all to test and try to break anything to do with Attendance in this update. Calculating or printing, for a full semester or just a date range. Let me warn you that if you select a date-range that spans between two enrollment periods you may actually discover something. What you will discover is that we don't do that!!!!!!!!1 04/30/12 - Thanks to you helpful and patient users, we have fixed another little gotcha' in the Academic Components business. Also we think we have the 'Hours Between Tests' working correctly in all situations. Fingers crossed! 04/27/12 - Whew! We have been busier than we would like. More fooling around with the Attendance printout stuff. Now, not only are individual month attendance correct, but the entire semester is correctly calculating enrolled, absent and percent. The various printouts that share code with the Academic Components warning (from below), now all behave as we would expect. We also learned a little more about the MSDS 'Student Record Maintenance' collection. Adjustments are in this update. The MSDS "CollectionId" has been updated for EndOfYear. 04/17/12 - Extended the 'Warn for Academic Components' flexibility to other attendance related reports. Because several of you have been using Learning Labs inappropriately, when we introduced this enforcement of learning lab protocol, many of you found yourself without students on your attendance sheets. There is a new question during attendance sheet setup. Do you want to "Treat missing Academic Components in the 'Old' manner? (Y/N)". Answer Yes to continue the way you have been doing all year. Answer No and you will not have student names printed unless they are actually in the learning lab with a class. A little adjustment in the MAERS Monthly attendance. March was throwing an extra day because it ended on a Saturday. 04/13/12 - Friday the 13th! At least one of our fellow users needed the ability to maintain recordkeeping for more than four building codes. Now you may maintain up to nine different building codes. Improved performance of the 'Warn for Academic Components' funtionality that we added last week. Added (partial) support for the GAIN Assessment Test. You can at least enter test dates and scores. Those of you using this test please let us know. 04/06/12 - Refer to the entry for 03/30/12, some folks want to see all those students without Academic Components in a Lab to show up on attendance sheets anyway. They have been taken care of privately. Those of you who would like to be 'Warned' if a student no longer has active Academic components in a Lab, select that from the INCLUDE menu when setting up your attend- ance turn-around sheets in Menu:2.1. Let us know how this works for you. 04/04/12 - Had to 'adjust' the Record Maintenance export, it seems they now prefer to have the last date of your date range as the AsOfDate in the file instead of the date of the event that caused the record to be exported. Oh well, they make the rules, eh? 03/30/12 - Another user was more interested in the Hours Since Last Test reports in Menu:2.5. Well, thanks to that user you may use those reports with confidence. 03/30/12 - More attendance, this one you will like. If a student no longer has active academic component classes in a Learning Lab, their name will not print on the lab attendance sheet. 03/27/12 - Tweaked the Create new Worktable for exited students. 03/24/12 - Ok, we think we finally are as smart as you would like us to be. The "Hours Between Assessments" now will properly account for years outside of the current year. That had been the problem, now not a problem. Try to break it! 03/20/12 - Apparently we are not as good as you would like so we have, again, re-written the MAERS Monthly Attendance. Please try to break this one too! 03/20/12 - Let's not forget special favors for our friends at MCTI. 02/28/12 - A minor 'tweak' for our friends that have Special Ed students. 02/27/12 - Added a feature to 'fix' the StudentResident LEA if it is invalid and STUREC(c) can correctly guess the answer. 02/24/12 - One more time... A major re-write of the thingie that calculates the hours between tests and hours since whatever. This new one is reliable in calculating attendance spread over more than one enrollment period. Also a tweak for you folks that have Special Ed youngsters. 02/22/12 - Fixing the auto fte routine to properly handle expelled youngsters the other day, we introduced a missing variable that would prevent you from running student worksheets in Menu:8. 02/21/12 - Adjusted the MSDS Export file for a stealth change introduced by CEPI this past fall that we missed earlier. Amazing Grace! With the help of at least one of our neurotic users who insited on entering results data for assessment tests for adults in BOTH the 'Official Assessments' and the 'Graded Assessments' panel, we have figured out what mysteriously caused some Hours Between Tests to be zero when we all could clearly see that there was indeed attendance. This oversight has been corrected in this update. 02/20/12 - Updated the Automagical FTE engine to properly account for permanently expelled youngsters. 02/15/12 - An adjustment for our friends who run more than one enrollment period sharing the same count date. 02/14/12 - Happy Valentines Day everyone. Here we go again with what I will predict as the last update of the damn MAERS attendance business. 02/13/12 - Not so fast there Kemo'sabe! We did nail the MAERS attendance, but only for the fall semester. Now we have it nailed for all semesters. 02/10/12 - We believe that we have finally nailed the MAERS Monthly Attendance problems we were having. Also the hours between assessments seems to be caught up wit reality. 02/03/12 - Cleaned up a distraction in the calculate hours between tests for participants. 02/02/12 - To prove that I am an equal opportunity 'screw-up', I screwed up yesterday's fix of the day before's fix, eh? 02/01/12 - In the 'No Good Deed go Unpunished' the fix we made yesterday broke. Well it is better than new now. Also fixed the re-enroll part of MSDS so that it better reads your mind as to your intentions, maybe. 01/31/12 - Added a special 'catch up' routine for those of you who have Special Education students. The SpcEd data you entered in the fall may not have migrated forward as you expected. Try Menu:5.8.4.9. 01/27/12 - Cleaned up a misspelled variable. Also, the Credit Analysis we thought was broken on the 25th, was not. It was bad data. 01/25/12 - Under certain obscure circumstances, the Credit Analysis may not be 100% correct. Now it is! 01/23/12 - Another re-work of the MAERS Monthly Attendance. 01/13/12 - A little tune-up on the Nutrition Eligibility listing found at Menu:6.1.5. This now better accounts for this 'crossover' time of year between Fall and Spring MSDS records. 01/12/12 - If you tried to Open school for a date range for a select group of classes, STUREC(c) would not do its job. Now it does. 01/10/12 - One of your persistent fellow users kept bugging us about a bug that, in certain circumstances, would not properly update the attendance picture when you Early Compteted a student. Corrected! 01/09/12 - Now, when you re-enroll a fall student, the Supplemental Nutrition setting you had in the fall will roll over into the spring MSDS record. 01/06/12 - For those of you who know you are smarter than dumb old STUREC(c), you may now select whomever you want to include on your Monthly MAERS Attendance report. May this serve as a reminder that we are discontinuing active support of MAERS related special functions in STUREC(c). If you disagree with this decision, please ask the nice folks at MAERS. 01/03/12 - One of you found the only place in all of STUREC(c) that we missed when we updated our attendance calculation routines. The class attendance by month now shows the proper information for all months regardless of number of days. 12/21/11 - Much to our chagrin, one of our faithfull users discovered that if you have a class setup as a Learning Lab - and an Exception class - and use an Alternate Schedule, that the MAERS Monthly Attendance report could be incorrect by a few hours per class each month. We believe that we have found and addressed all instances throughout the program where attendance is calculated. We have created a completely new and much faster algorithm to isolate and calculate attendance for a date range. This properly accounts for Alternate Schedule classes and/or Exception classes. For those of you who like to play 'gotcha' and run attendance reports from several different menus and then compare them, please continue to do that and if you find a discrepency, please notify us as soon as possible. 12/13/11 - Note the cool version number this is: 11.12.13 12/12/11 - A little something extra for you MAERS fans. At Menu:7.5.2.1. Student Data Sheets. New options: you will be asked if you want to include Full History, Current Year Only or None regarding classes taken. You will also be asked if you want to include the currently selected month of Attendance. This will produce one or two sheets for each student. You can get monthly Attendance only at Menu:2.7. 12/09/11 - Tightened up the MAERS Attendance report found at Menu:2.7. It will now accurately report any month, not just the ones with 30 days. 12/07/11 - Added a direct link to the SD|E Exit panel from the regular XT Exit panel. This will also go to the ME|X panel. 11/22/11 - We added Adult Ed detail to the 4061 Report found in the MSDS Report menu. This will help you identify possible mis-codes regarding the Section 107 follow-up report. 11/18/11 - We were told today that the MAERS people say that you may retest TABE students in as little as 40 hours. 11/16/11 - We added the DS-4061 back into the MSDS Local Reports at item 6. Also find a Supplemential Nutrition report at item 12. To get a detailed breakdown of your Adult students, run item 7. PAR X-Ref. 11/14/11 - We discovered much to our dismay, that we could not recover backup zip files on our new Windows 7 computer. Not good, eh? Well, we are working on that and hope to have this resolved for you Win7 fans shortly. Also included for you MAERS fans, the option to calculate the attendance for each class for a month for each adult. Find this at Menu:2.7. just answer "E" for each class before you select the month. It will not make any sense for those of you who have adult students enrolled in only one class at a time. But then, a lot of what the folks at MAERS expect you to do doesn't make a lot of sense most of the time. Another one for MAERS fans. In Menu:5.8.2. find a new item "Recalculate MAERS Goals". This will recalc all adults to have the most minimally restrictive goals. If this is not what you want, don't do it! What was interesting on 11/11/11? If you entered a new student who enrolled on that day, STUREC(c) would swing into its special routine of asking about every date. Remember that is our 'secret' way to get into change old dates. 11/11/11 - Does anyone recall the significance of this date to STUREC(c) users? I'll remind you in the next update. We also 'tweaked' the RecordMaintenance export process. 11/07/11 - A little 'tweak' to help those of you who have gone through the MSDS process several times already, but now have changed some FTE's because students returned within the 30 day rule. Now those new FTE's will be properly updated in the MSDS export file Also modified a behavior that in some cases would cause a youngsters in ESL with a diploma from a foreign country to not have adult FTE reported. Also, we discovered by accident, that if you claim FTE for July and September, you MUST have the same funding code in the Adult Ed section for both periods. 11/04/11 - Fixed an error in the UIC Import process that would cause incorrect UIC to be written to a student record in the case that the user changed Building Codes in the middle of registration. If you didn't do this, don't worry. 11/03/11 - We have a MAJOR widget for those of you who may have experienced discrepencies between your Adult FTE breakdown from MSDS and the DS-4061 Summary produced by the FTE process in Menu:8. I'm not going to try to explain all that went into said 'discrepencies', but this update has a widget that will fixe those discrepencies and give you a report of the ones that it could not fix on its own. Menu:7.5.1.1. and answer Yes when asked if you want to 'fix' Prog/Grid errors. Then do Menu:7.5.1.3. Create an Export file. Then 4. PrintLocal, number 6. PAR X-Ref. This gives you a listing with the MSDS codes and the local Grid Code. If there is an error you will see an asterisk at the end of the line. 11/01/11 - A special 'tweak' for our friends at the Jail. Also a clean-up for those of you who have Special Ed students. 10/28/11 - A special 'tweak' for our friends at MCTI, has to do with their 'Specail' considerations in the legislation. Also, for another friend that we helped out a couple years ago, it seems that now that help is no longer needed. If you are not one of these two friends, this update will not affect you and you don't need it. Of course, it will not harm you either, and if you need the earlier updates, it's in here. 10/26/11 - Those of you who have 'Homeless' youngsters need this update. There was an error introduced into the data dictionary used by STUREC(c) to maintain the structure of its data files, on 10/06/11. Along with the other changes required by the new structures of the MSDS Export files, we accidently switched the field sizes of the two Homeless questions. This update will correct the file structure problem, but you will need to visit each of your Homeless students and review the data in the SD | H Panel. The Homeless shelter type and the UnaccompaniedYouth will be hosed. Sorry about the inconvenience. 10/24/11 - A litle clarification for our friends serving youngsters that have been 'Permantently Expelled' as PAR, State funded only. This was introduced on 10/10/11 and here is the adjustment. Please use whatever local Enrollment Category is appropriate, you do not need to be limited to "HSD" as stated earlier. Please continue to use Grid Code "EX" so the FTE functions will know how to handle them. In the MSDS Panel, in the L. Adult Education function use code 3317 for the AdultFTEProgramCode. This will make CEPI happy and you will get proper credit for these students. 10/20/11 - This morning we discovered a single digit that somehow got 'flipped' and would prevent the MSDS Export file from validating and therefore may fail at CEPI. On the Student Data Screen, in ME (MAERS Enrollment) you now may get in with ASE and HSD as well as typical HSC. 10/18/11 - Damn 'date math'! This update fixes a date math error that could allow student records with enrollment dates after the Legislated Count Date to be exported. Normall you would catch these because they would be zero FTE. 10/17/11 - IMPORTANT *** This update corrects a major error in the MSDS Export module. Without this update you will get a fatal error when you submit your Fall General collection file. 10/14/11 - A few little cleanups, but nothing major. There is no longer a separate SupplementalNutrioon submission, but you can still get a report at Menu:7.5.1.7.2. Also fixed a little annoyance with the SupplementalNutrition data entry screen. 10/12/11 - Added some 'bulletproofing' to the function in the SD Panel that creates a new instance of the MSDS Cycle record. In some circumstances a new record was created without the proper year and cycle designator data. 10/11/11 - A little cleanup on printing Re-enrollment schedules from the Student Data Screen, option CR | P | 3. 10/10/11 - By popular demand... If you have a permanently expelled youngster that you wish to fund as a Participant under Section 107(3)(b)(ii), now you can do that. When you register the student (LR) make their Enrollment Category = "HSD" and STUREC(c) will guide you through the rest. Verify that you want to use Funding code = "PAR". Then you will be asked if they have a GED Certificate. If they do, then their Grid Code will become "4A". If not, then you will be asked to confirm that the student is indeed a permentally expelled student. That will make their Grid Code = "EX" and the FTE menu knows what to do. 10/07/11 - Some final (we hope) tyding up of the MSDS Error checker and Export creator in Menu:7.5., and corrected a couple misspellings in the various MSDS Panels. 10/04/01 - Fixed a stupid human typographical error I accidently included in yesterday's update. 10/01/11 - The new schema for the MSDS Fall cycle is now in place. You may Request UIC and create the regular Fall Export file. Both have been tested and are free of structural errors. All of the changes to various data groups that the folks from CEPI introduced this summer are ready. Be aware that some of the option codes in the MSDS Panel have changed to follow the changes made by CEPI. Don't worry, you will figure it out. Also finished the migration of the MAERS business with the new Short Term and Long Term goals. Also you will find the Adult Education option in the SD panel works much more smoothly now. 09/09/11 - Replaced the old MAERS Goals with the new ones from the new Adult Learning Plan. Also, a couple of required modifications for our friends at MCTI. 09/07/11 - Since CEPI changed their specs and now allows periods, hyphens and commas in names, STUREC(c) does too. They also added the pound sign # to be legal in addresses. 09/06/11 - Added a little more protection and intelligence to the teacher setup so you may Activate a teacher without going through the entire Edit process. Also in the class setup to make it a little smarter regarding teachers in non TSDL required classes. As always, try to remember to read the messages to help guide you. 08/29/11 - Tightened up the TSDL error check routine for you late comers who did not put all your data in in the correct sequence. 08/26/11 - Added another bonus for you MAERS fans. If you haven't already heard, the Geniuses in Lansing have decided to require you to submit Monthly Attendance on all of your adult students. Now, I don't know if that means attendance for each student for each month, or does it mean enter attendance into their system each month? I dunno' they don't consult with me. Anyway, you now have a new report found at Menu:2.7. MAERS Monthly Attendance. You choose the year and month and STUREC(c) will print the students along with their scheduled hours for the month and hours attended and hours absent. Also on the line with be their last test date and EFL. Also, for those of you who must report your MSDS under separate LEA numbers because of contractual obligations, this ability has been added to the Export of TSDL data as well. 08/25/11 - Another of our 'Eagle Eyed' users noted that if you went in to edit a teacher who had a Social Security Number, STUREC(c) would stop you complaining that the SSN already belonged to that person. What, eh? 08/24/11 - Because of more testing with real data from the field, we were able to nail down another inconsistency in the TSDL process. If you gave a student a grade of "NC", even though you had a legal CompletionStatus code, STUREC(c) did not properly handle this situation. Well now it does. 08/19/11 - By popular demand, a little something for you MAERS fans. A new thingie in the Student Data Screen, if an adult student has more than 450 cummulative hours, the hours will show up in the bottom left corner with red, if less than 450 hours it will be the regular data color of white on blue. Also, in Menu:7.5. find a new report 9. Longitudinal Attendance. This will ask you to select a year, if you do select a year then the report will be limited to students who are/were enrolled for that year. If you do not select a year (Escape out of the year selector) then you will get ALL students. The report will list the student name, first year enrolled, date enrolled, total hours enrolled, total hours attended and up to three programs they were enrolled in (oldest first). You may find this useful in figuring out which students have hit that 'magic' 450 hour mark. 08/16/11 - Corrected a problem in the TSDL Error Report and Export functions. If a student only had one class and it was not a Reportable Class, the student personal demographics would be included but not the class information. This really annoyed the schema checker. 08/15/11 - Added a new feature for those of you who may have been plagued by "Printer Switcheroo" this summer. Find this at Menu:7.3.2.2. Set Printer Connection. You will see a red box containing all of the available print devices available to your workstation. Select the one you want, then answer Yes to set it as the default, then answer Yes to secure the connection. Be patient, this could take a couple minutes. 'Set Workstation Printer' tells STUREC(c) how to format a report properly for the printer, 'Set Printer Connection' tells STUREC(c) which printer print resource to use. They are not the same! You need both to be set correctly. 08/10/11 - Welcome to the 2011-2012 school year. At this point there is not much new happening. This update fixes the missing variable when you atttempted to include a Special Message on a report card. Happy new school year! We have put a lot of thought and effort into making STUREC(c) nearly as smart as you are, but it is only a machine! It really cannot think. What it does is it follows rules. You may not know the 'rules', but they're there. For instance, in the SD panel (MSDS) the items are coded with letters of the alphabet. The alphabet is a list, this list has rules. The rule is that the letter A comes before the letter B and the letter E comes after the earlier letters in the list and before the later letters in the list. Often times STUREC(c) will expect you to follow the rules and do things in the order presented. For example, you should visit option B before you do C and then do D after you're done with C. If you will follow this simple sequence, the data entry / verification of the special MSDS data will go much more smoothly for you. This may seem awfully 'sequential', and it is! Sometimes doing things in a sequential manner makes it easier for us humans to understand. When we do one thing then do the next thing it may come together and produce expected results. Often times menus are arranged like this. With the more important things higher in the list (lower number). Look at the FTEREC Menu for example. Item 1. is Audit worksheet, this comes before 4. Create print file and item 5. Print bedsheet reports comes after 4, create. The same theory is at work in the MSDS Reporting menu where item 1 is Create a new worktable, 2 is print the errors then the third item is to create the export file. It's as easy as 123. Take a minute and look at the menus that you are already familiar with and you too will see the symmetry and sensibility of the order to most of them. You're right, some menus appear to have no 'rhyme-or-reason' and some of them don't. We had to put the options to do jobs you need somewhere. A good example of this is Menu:6. Miscellaneous function. These items are just that; miscellaneous, no special order, no rhyme-or-reason, just jobs to do. Menus are just a tool for you to communicate with the software to select the job you need and with the appropriate parameters to accomplish your task. =================================================================== ----> If you are not using the compressed backup method offered <-- ----> through STUREC(c), every day, please don't call us with <-- ----> any questions related to data corruption! You alone must <-- ----> take responsibility for your data. If you are regularly <-- ----> using the compressed backup method through STUREC(c), we <-- ----> will do our best, and may be able to help you recover <-- ----> from disaster. You are welcome to upload your compressed <-- ----> backup archive to us for safe off-site storage. This is <-- ----> is a FREE service and can be accessed at the conclusion <-- ----> of the backup process (Menu:7.7. Run Backup Procedure) <-- ----> <-- ----> If you are not using the compressed backup method <-- ----> available through STUREC(c), any data recoveries we <-- ----> perform on your behalf will be billed at $ 120.00 / hour <--