Data Exchange / Ed-Fi: Best Practices

School Calendar

• Ensure that all required Calendar Event Types have been added at the district office
• It is acceptable to pad the calendar as long as the day values are set appropriately
  • Note that padding the beginning of the school year is not required in order for teachers to access their classes in the PTP Gradebook
  • Do not pad student enrollments
    • Entry dates should be set to the first in-session day of school that the student was in attendance
    • Exit dates should be set to the day after the last in-session date that the student was in attendance
• Days not in session should not have any values populated, including Cycle Day, Bell schedule, and Membership value.
  • Use the automated calendar function to ‘clean up’ days not in session.

Exit Code Mapping

• Ensure that the student enrollment Dropout or Mobility Code is populated for all students. If this field is blank, the Exit Code is used
• Map all exit codes to match the downloaded state code
  Navigation: System Administrator, Data Exchange, Code Set Mappings, Code Set: Exit Withdraw Types

Remote Attendance

• Do not track attendance for classes conducted by organizations outside your district (e.g. Career Centers)
  • The ‘conducting school” is responsible for reporting all data related to these classes (e.g. teacher assignments; student schedules, grades, and attendance ) 

Mid-year Grade Level or ADM Type Changes

• Do not edit the existing enrollment.
• Use the Create New Enrollment function, and use the date of the grade level or ADM type change as the entry date for the new enrollment and update the values as appropriate

Summer Withdrawals/No-shows

• If a student was expected to attend your school but never showed up (not even for 1 day):
  • Do not delete the student’s enrollment from PowerSchool!
  • Modify the student’s current enrollment to have matching entry and exit dates, as described below.
    • The date entered should fall between July 1 and the day before the first day of school.
      • EX: first day of school = 8/10,  entry and exit date = 8/7
• If the original enrollment was published to the ODS with different dates, this process will cause the original enrollment record to be deleted on the state side, removing this student from your roster.

Mid-Year No-shows

• The process is the same as above, with the following exceptions:
  
  • Modify the student’s current enrollment to have matching entry and exit dates as described below:
    • The date used should be a calendar day that is not in session AND falls before the intended start date
      • EX1: The student’s expected start date was Monday, March 8^th
        • Set the entry and exit date to either Saturday, March 6^th, or Sunday, March 7^th.
      • EX 2:  The student’s expected start date falls on the first day after a holiday vacation break
        • Set the entry and exit date to either a weekend date or any date that occurs during the holiday or vacation time frame
  • If the original enrollment was published to the ODS with different dates, this process will cause the original enrollment record to be deleted on the state side, removing this student from your roster.

Alternative Education Schools (no state school number)

• Causes ‘Rejected School Association’ error in PowerSchool due to an invalid State School number
• To correct this scenario, apply one or both of the following:
  • Populate the Alternate School Number with a valid State School number.
  • Populate the Accountable School field for students as required(this value will override the value entered in the Alternate School Number for the selected student).

Services Only schools (no state school number)

• Causes ‘Rejected School Association’ error in PowerSchool due to an invalid State School number
• To correct this scenario, apply one or both of the following:
  • Populate the Alternate School Number with a valid State School number.
  • Populate the Access School field for students as required (this value will override the value entered in the Alternate School Number for the selected student).