June 1, 2000
Page 1 of 3
POSSIBLE ACTION REQUIRED
June 1, 2000
TO THE SUPERINTENDENT ADDRESSED:
SUBJECT: 1998-99 Returning and Non-Returning Students
School Districts and charter schools are required, as part of their fall data submission to the Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS), to report the status of all students enrolled in the district or charter in the prior year in Grades 7-12. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) compared 1999-00 school district enrollment and leaver information to last year’s 1998-99 enrollment and attendance collections in order to assess whether all of last year’s Grade 7-12 students had been accounted for by each school district in the state. This analysis yielded three types of information:
1.students for whom enrollment or leaver records were expected and received;
2.students for whom enrollment or leaver records were expected but NOT received (under-reported students); and
3.students for whom no leaver record was expected but one was received (over-reported leavers).
If your district has students identified as under-reported or over-reported, it appears that PEIMS Submission 1 reporting requirements may not have been met for some of these students. There are accountability consequences for underreporting students. Future actions expected to be taken by school districts and TEA related to under-reported students are outlined below.
Information on the TEA Website
At 10:00 a.m. on Friday, June 9, 2000, TEA will post a press release and state- and district-level information concerning 1997-98 and 1998-99 returning and non-returning students. The posted information will include a summary of state-level leaver information and a district-by-district report of the following for each of the last two school years: reported students, returning students, reported graduates, official dropouts, dropout records excluded, official leavers, leaver records excluded, under-reported students, over-reported leavers, and the percentage of students under-reported. The 1997-98 information is currently available on the TEA website at the following address: Similar information for the 1998-99 school year will be added on June 9, 2000.
There has been intensive interest on the part of the legislature, the media, and professional organizations concerning both the general accuracy of dropout reporting and the specific impact on accuracy of instituting the leaver collection. There are several purposes for providing this statewide list. One is to show that many more students in these grades are being accounted for by school districts in the second year of leaver record reporting versus the first year of reporting (comparing the number of under-reported students and the percentage of under-reported students from one year to the next). Another is to show that improvement in leaver reporting is still needed.
2000 Accountability Ratings
For the 2000 rating cycle, any district that exceeds a specified threshold for accuracy in reporting the status of their prior year Grade 7-12 students cannot be rated Exemplary or Recognized. These thresholds are:
Number of Under-reported Students:1,000 or greater
OR
Percent of Under-reported Students:10.0 percent or greater
These rating consequences will not apply to the 2000 accountability ratings for districts with fewer than five under-reported students for the 1998-99 school year. This policy may be reconsidered next year, however, if the same districts continue to exceed the 10 percent threshold described above for under-reported students.
2000 Accountability Ratings Appeals
The agency has made significant attempts to determine matches between prior year and current year student records submitted by school districts. However, if a district whose rating is affected by the thresholds described above can show that the non-matches are due to its significant efforts to eliminate all Person Identification Database (PID) errors from its data submission and NOT to the failure to submit the required information, then the commissioner may consider a ratings appeal. Additionally, the degree to which a district has accounted for, or failed to account for, all Grade 7-12 students enrolled in the prior school year (1998-99) will be taken into account when considering whether to grant or deny campus and district dropout appeals related to the 2000 accountability ratings. School districts will receive their Accountability Data Table (Part I) with preliminary attendance rates, dropout rates, college admissions results, TAAS/TASP equivalency, and Recommended High School Program participation from TEA in mid-June. This table will also indicate whether the district has exceeded the 1,000 or 10 percent thresholds for under-reported students referred to earlier. See the 2000 Accountability Manual, Section VII – Appealing the 2000 Accountability Ratings (pages 69-76), for a description of the appeals procedures.
2000 Accountability Leaver Data Investigations
The agency conducts data analyses and inquiries each year to ensure that the data used for the accountability ratings are accurate. If significant discrepancies are identified, an inquiry is initiated with the reporting district. Random sampling for accuracy may be used in some of these analyses. A variety of analyses will be undertaken to verify the accuracy of leaver data, including, but not limited to: (1) examining circumstances when zero dropouts are reported for a district or campus and (2) identifying schools that have no prior year attendance but report leavers for the prior year. Selected leaver reason codes will also be verified using other data sources collected by the agency. For example, students coded as transfers to other public school districts in Texas will be matched to enrollment records to verify that the student transfers took place.
In addition, TEA can identify districts with significant numbers or percentages of under-reported students and conduct data quality investigations. Triggers for such investigations may be set lower than the thresholds used for preventing a district from receiving the Exemplary or Recognized rating described earlier. However, districts exceeding those thresholds specified can assume they will be investigated. Finally, districts that received site visits for data quality issues related to leaver information last year will automatically be subject to a desk audit of current year data to determine whether continued problems likely exist. See the 2000 Accountability Manual, Section VIII – System Safeguards (pages 77-83), for a description of the audit procedures.
Confidential Lists of Under-reported Students and Over-reported Leavers for 1998-99
Before districts submitted their final 1999-00 PEIMS Submission 1 data, a roster table of all students reported as enrolled or in attendance in Grades 7-12 in 1998-99 was prepared by TEA. School district student enrollment and leaver records from the 1999-00 PEIMS Submission 1 were then matched against this table as part of initial PEIMS processing, and districts were provided with reports of under-reported students and over-reported leavers. Under-reported students are students listed on the 1998-99 roster table for whom no enrollment or leaver records were submitted as part of the 1999-00 PEIMS submission. Over-reported students are students not listed on the roster table for whom a leaver record was submitted. School districts had the opportunity to use these reports to modify their data to increase accuracy before the final PEIMS resubmission date. Districts responded very positively to receiving these diagnostic reports, and many used the reports to assist them in correcting and resubmitting their leaver data.
In addition to the PEIMS processing described in the previous paragraph, the agency also made significant attempts to determine matches between prior year (1998-99) and current year
(1999-00) student records for individual school districts. More generous matching criteria—that still ensured a high degree of accuracy in reporting state and district leaver information—were applied to the under-reported students and over-reported leavers within an individual school district to create the official 1998-99 returning and non-returning students report. This is the district-by-district report that will be posted to the agency website on June 9, 2000. Because of this additional processing, the numbers of under-reported students and over-reported leavers for the 1998-99 school year for a given school district were further reduced from those generated as part of the standard PEIMS processing.
The agency does not plan to send automatically to every school district confidential lists containing identifying information for under-reported students and over-reported leavers because the majority of this information was incorporated into standard PEIMS processing procedures and school district reports this year. However, if a school district would like to receive these lists, a signed letter from the superintendent requesting this information is required. Written requests signed by the superintendent should be sent to the Division of Research and Evaluation, Texas Education Agency, 1701 N. Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 78701 or to the following fax number: (512) 475-3499. Because they contain confidential student information, the lists cannot be faxed; they can only be provided to school districts via regular mail or in person.
As in prior years, accountability ratings appeals will not be considered before districts receive their partial Accountability Data Tables in mid-June. Questions concerning the posted website information related to 1997-98 and 1998-99 returning and non-returning students should be directed to the Research and Evaluation Division at (512) 475-3523. Inquiries concerning 2000 accountability ratings appeals can be referred to the Division of Performance Reporting at (512) 463-9704. Questions concerning leaver data investigations should be addressed to the Special Data Inquiry Unit at (512) 463-9290.
Sincerely,
Criss Cloudt, Associate Commissioner
Policy Planning and Research