MAERS: General Review for any Reporting CycleOk, here are the easy steps. Start at Menu:7.5.2.5. Create Working Files
Select the appropriate year and ending month. March is the end of the third cycle. End of Year is June.
This will work through your files, and when finished you will want to Print Error Report, option 6.
If you include only Fatal errors you will get a shorter list, but there may be some warnings you will want to look at also. So, try it both ways. You will get a report similar to this.
Let's take a look at this example. Missing or Unknown Site name, class name or teacher name probably means the student dropped all of their classes or had zero attendance. Sure enough, the fourth line says hours attended less than 12. If it is not the End of Year (June) then the 12 hour thing is a warning. At the end of the year it will be a fatal error. The next warning is Employed persons should have a wage at entry. Well, it appears that the nice MAERS people have decided that that should only be a warning this year. Next year you will have to get an entry wage on all employed persons. As you see, most of the errors are self explanatory. You should go into the individual student records and correct whatever you can. On the other hand, if you get a report like this, with a gazillion fatal errors on fundamental data...
you may want to consider the "Default Missing Data" option.
Please read this message literally! If required data is missing, STURECİ will try to fill it in for you. If data that you have already entered is just plain inappropriate for the situation, STURECİ may actually change the data. Be forewarned, if you believe that you are smarter than STURECİ, then do not run this option! It will go through your participants and create a MAERS record for any students that do not have one, it will default missing data with proper data and it might even correct data that has been entered erroneously. For instance, if you have a student enrolled as an ABE student, it would be improper to have a goal of Obtain an Adult High School diploma. That doesn't make sense to the MAERS computer, so STUREC(c) would change that. "Other" goals are no longer accepted. After you run the Default Missing Data option, (only once) you must Create Working Files again. Then run the Print Error Report again and this time it should be much more manageable. Now, bite the bullet and use your list as a working plan. Go into each student listed and 'fix' whatever error is listed. When you think you have all of those errors fixed, run options 5 and 6 again. Look at the error report. Probably now, the only errors still on the report are things that you cannot fix, such as Missing Assessment. Remember that this is a process, or a cycle if you will with three basic steps: Create Working Files, Print Errors, Fix Errors and keep repeating the cycle until you are satisfied. Once you have all of your correctable errors corrected, you are ready to run 7 .Create Export Files.
When that is finished, you will be presented with a report of the records included in this batch submission. This is essentially the file that we combine with other districts data and send on to the MAERS computer. If you are not satisfied with this report, go back to the 'fix' student records, Create Working Files, Print Errors cycle until you are satisfied.
While you are looking over this 'Export File' report, you may want to review it for duplicates. Final Step in the MAERS Batch process . . . Make a regular backup from Menu:7.7.Run Backup Procedure Send this backup to us using the handy-dandy Upload button on our website. Here is the shortcut. http://www.sturec.com/uploads/ Be sure to mark it for the appropriate reporting period on the MAERS Submission line.. Here is a reminder on how to do that. Questions or comments, send them to drrobert@sturec.com [WebMaster's note: for best results, print in 'Landscape' orientation.] |
