MSDS: General Review for any Reporting Cycle

All along during you normal registration activities, you have been entering the MSDS specific data via the MSDS Review panel, right?

Be sure that you identify the correct Reporting Cycle that you are working on.

Use the Fall cycle when reporting on events that happened between July first of the count year and the fall Count Date in October. Use the Spring cycle when reporting events that occurred between the fall Count Date and the spring Count date in February. Use the End of Year cycle to report events that occurred between the spring Count Date in February and the end of the year on June 30th. An 'Event' includes such things as enrollment, dropout or graduation and of course FTE count.

Now some of this is new and different from last year's MSDS. The data required by the new system is a little different and somewhat spread-out from what we were used to. Because of this, we have given MSDS its own task menu. It can be reached from the standard Student Data Entry task menu by pressing "SD" MSDS Review. 

Here are all of the items you should be concerned with for each student. These are things you have direct control over via this data entry screen. For any reporting cycle you must actually visit at least one of these data items to force STUREC© to write the data for that cycle back to the hard-disk. STUREC© will remember the data you put in for the previous cycle, but you must visit at least one item to cause a disk write. You should familiarize yourself with all of the group task panels.

Let's take a look at this new MSDS Reporting System Menu. The bright white item is the currently selected item. The black items are groups that you can access, this will change with the type of student and the program(s) selected in item F. You must check on items B, C, D and E for every student and option F for youngsters and option L for Adults.. Depending on which program (item F) then other options may  become available. You can use the up and down arrows to move the highlite or simply press the single letter corresponding to the task group you want to access.

Let's use the alphabet and review each group task in order. 

A. SubmittingEntity

Notice how the title of the dialog box is the same as on the task menu. On this one there is nothing for you to do because STUREC© knows what is needed here. Just press "A" to Accept and go to the next item. Visiting this group task panel is what gets the ball rolling for the selected reporting cycle.

B. PersonalCore

STUREC© has picked up basic information from your regular database. Here is where you will 'hand-enter' a UIC if necessary. New last year is a special 'bucket' for Middle name and Suffix. For years many of you have been putting a middle name or initial in with the first name and a suffix in with the last name. Now you have to separate them out for the folks in Lansing. Another new thing, if the student is not part of a multiple birth, just leave it blank or enter a zero.

Remember to read the messages in the Message Box at the bottom of the screen. They are there to help you through all of these steps. This is a new group this year (2011-12), called SchoolDemographics.

On any dialog, the grayed out data means that you cannot directly edit it. This is brought in from elsewhere, but it is data that must be reported. The basic rule is "If the cursor visits an item, you can edit it." As you can see here, the first four items are already filled in and grayed out. You can edit the Grade. It must be one of the approved codes from the list.

C. SchoolDemographics

The next group is PersonalDemographics.  All of the 'student' stuff is taken from the Student Data Screen.

D. PersonalDempgraphics

The only thing you can change is the ResidentLEANumber which is dependant on data found in the NEXT group. If you already know the LEA number of the student's home school district, go ahead an type it in. If you don't know, simply put in a question mark and press enter or start typing the first few letters of the other district name and a question mark.

You also can edit the StudentResidentCounty  You must enter the two digit code for the county in which the student resides. In most cases it will be the same county that your school is in, however in some situations the student may actually live in an adjoining county and you must use the other county's code. Use the question mark [?] to look up another county.

E. Enroll/Exit/Residency

This is another 'reorganized' group panel. You should be familiar with these elements, just maybe not grouped like this before. If the student has exited you must select one of the exit codes from the list. STUREC©  knows the Date of Count, but you must enter the student's Residency code and whether or not you used the "Ten 30 Day Rule" when figuring the FTE.

If your student is exiting you may enter a valid ExitStatus and then you can enter a date. If you get caught in this help screen and really don't want to exit your student, use code 19 Expected to Continue.

Student Residency: Pupils who live in your school district are coded "14" and pupils who live outside of your district should be coded "06". The student's home school district code should be entered in the PersonalDemographics panel.  All adults should be coded "14" regardless of where they live, or use this table.. If you are a PSA, all of your students are residency code 14.

F. ProgramParticipation

 If your student is a youngster, Alternative Pupil under 20, then Program Eligibility Participation needs to be verified. This is no longer necessary for adults, only youngsters. STUREC© will guess which program code should be used. In this case it is a 'no-brainer' because the student is a youngster registered as an Alternative Pupil.  If appropriate, you may check more than one item.

G. PersonalCurriculum

If your youngsters is involved in a Personal Curriculum this panel is for you. You must select one or more items from the blue list and only one item from the red list.

H. HomelessDemographics.

Pretty self-explanatory.

I. LimitedEnglishProficient.  You do not have this program.

J. AdvancedAccelerated

Pick one or more items as applicable, from each self-explanatory list.

K. TitleIAS

This panel is not applicable to any of our programs.

L. AdultEducation

In the Fall cycle, you will be able to see both July and September count periods. If you did not have a July count, simply Enter through it and make sure the September data is correct for each adult student.

Special Education will probably start with . . .

M. InitialIEP

. . . followed by

N. SpecialEducation

STUREC(c) will ask you questions and you answer them by selecting you answers from the pop-ups. Red boxes you can select only one item, from blue boxes you may select as many as appropriate.

O. SpecialEdFTE

Of course, if you have a Special Education student, you probably have Section 52 or Section 53 FTE. Use this panel to apportion the FTE values. STUREC(c) will make sure that the total General Ed FTE value does not exceed 1.00. 

P. EDSpecialEdAssessment is not available. If you need this please contact Dr. Bob..

At this time, we have not finished the new and greatly changed Disciplinary Incident and Consequence panels.

S. Attendance

The only thing left is Attendance, and you cannot change anything here, STUREC(c) will gather this data from the student's schedule

T. SupplementalNutrition

That is pretty much it for the data entry part. As you can see, most of the data to populate this MSDS specific stuff is brought over from your regular daily work. Some of the labels may be new, but the meaning is pretty much the same.

Ok, all of your students have been reviewed and you are ready to create the actual MSDS file, eh? Depending on the cycle you are reporting, here are some things to remember.

• For Fall cycle, students who were counted for FTE on the Fall Count Date will be included. Adult students counted in the 
  July count will be included here.
• You must include pupils marked as Expected to Continue in last year's End of Year file, but who have not returned.
• For Spring cycle, students who were counted for FTE on the Spring Count Date will be included, 
• You must include pupils marked as Expected to Continue in last Fall's file.
• For the End of Year cycle you will include all students who were counted in either Fall or Spring cycles, along with 
  their end of year status. Adult students counted in the April count will be included here.

The process is fairly simple and straight forward for the Fall and Spring cycles. Do not expect totally accurate results until after the 30 day rule for Fall and Spring and remember that for End of Year this is fairly meaningless until after classes have ended for the year and all attendance is in!  Students with FTE Value greater than zero for the September or February Count Date ( for adults this also includes July and April counts), will be included in the End of Year file. Also included will be students who graduated or otherwise exited your program or district.

 Go to Menu:7.5.1. MSDS Reporting and choose 1. Create New Worktable

First few times through this process, you will most likely have a few errors. Print them out then fix them and re-run this process until you get rid of as many errors as possible. Your error report may look something like this...

The reasons are pretty self-explanatory. The number between some names and the error message is the FTE that student was actually counted for. If you do not fix the error you will loose that FTE. No file will be accepted with missing UIC or any other fatal error condition. 

When you have completed your "fix errors", "create new worktable", "print errors cycle" you are ready for the last two steps. Create the Export File, this is the file you pass on to whomever in your district needs it. STUREC© will even offer to copy it to a floppy disk for you or send it via Email attachment. 

You will get a message similar to this when the file has been created.

The file created will be named something like X8080160_FAL2011.xml where the first letter is always "X" followed by your ISD code then followed by your LEA code and the name of the reporting period and has the extension of .xml.  This file will be found in the Export folder inside of your Sturec default directory (folder). This file conforms to all current CEPI definitions and passes the current schema.

And finally, for your peace of mind

Wow, how easy is this?

Remember, for the End of Year or final reporting cycle for the year, you have to account for students who were counted in either the Fall or Spring cycle and were not reported as dropped, graduated or otherwise exited in the Spring cycle. If a student was not counted for FTE in any count period, they will not be included in this file unless they have an exit code and date. Conversely, any student counted in any count period must be included here and must have an appropriate Status Upon Exit code and date.

Here are some of the errors that STUREC© checks for...

• Student not counted for FTE
• Missing or invalid residency status code
• Missing or invalid resident LEA code
• Missing or invalid Date of Birth
• Missing or invalid Place of Birth
• Local address missing and not Homeless
• marked Homeless, but has address
• Grade Level or Setting missing or invalid
• Enrolled after Count Date
• Invalid enrollment date
• Youngster less than 5 on December 1st
• Eligibility code is empty or invalid
• Pupil with Adult eligibility code
• Adult with Pupil eligibility code
• Shared time Pupil with invalid residency code
• Alternative Pupil with invalid shared time code
• Student with zero days enrolled
• Student with zero days attended
• Invalid disciplinary incident date
• Invalid expulsion date
• Missing exit code (if appropriate)
• Missing or invalid exit date (if appropriate)

STUREC© does not do any error-checking on categorical items such as Title I, Special Ed, Limited English and so on.

Just a little reminder that at the End of Year, we do not report Fall or Spring FTE for youngsters or adults. The only FTE that may be reported now would be from adults counted in the April count. Remember also -- this is where the state gets its information for calculating your districts Drop rate and Graduation rate.  You will want to make sure that you have all of your graduates properly marked as such. Both in the SD panel that we talked about here, also in the HT menu under Record Actual Graduate. 

There are a number of other data fields that are not reported at the end of the year.  If you have questions you may want to consult you local district MSDS expert. Of course, if that fails you may want to call Dr. Bob.

If you have diligently read all the way down to here, I'm going to give you a Tremendous Time-saving Tip, or as I like to call it, a "TTT".
Here it is: before you begin individually reviewing each student via the SD Panel, take a detour to Menu:7.5.1.1., select the correct reporting cycle then let 'er rip. This will pre-populate the MSDS Cycle record for each student you already have enrolled. Just saves you a little time later. Be sure NOT to bother with an error report at this time because there will be a lot. This simply creates a starting point, something like our old Default Missing Data in the SRSD era.

[WebMaster's note: for best results, print in 'Landscape' orientation.]