CEDARS 2024-2025 All Files

Introduction

The Comprehensive Education Data and Research System (CEDARS) is a longitudinal data system that allows the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to collect, store and report student, course, and teacher data. This data is used to make educational decisions and to determine whether schools and districts satisfy state and federal reporting requirements. A longitudinal data system is an information technology system capable of tracking student information over multiple years in multiple schools and districts.

There are 20 CEDARS files that must be submitted before the 15th of each month. All 16 CEDARS files are required in every submission, and more frequent submissions are recommended. Each file consists of data elements about students, staff, courses, or locations. All files are text tab-delimited and include headers.

CEDARS Files Naming Convention

The naming convention for each CEDARS file is as follows:

COUNTY-DISTRICT CODE_SCHOOL CODE_FileName_YYYYMMDD_SCHOOL YEAR.TXT

Example: File A submitted by District 12345 on January 16, 2019, appear as:

12345_0000_Location_20190116_20182019.txt

County-District Code: The five-digit county-district code, including leading zeroes where necessary.

School-Code: For district-level submissions, the school code must always be "0000". This section of the file name is reserved for special circumstances where an individual school may submit data separately from the district. In those rare instances, the four-digit OSPI school code is reflected. Contact OSPI Customer Support at 1-800-725-4311 or CustomerSupport@k12.wa.us for assistance.

File Name: File names as shown in the Data File Definitions Section of the CEDARS Manual from OSPI.

YYYYMMDD: The date of the extract. All files must have the same value for the date of extract.

School Year: An eight-digit code indicating the school year designation. The format is XXXXYYYY, where XXXX is the full year at the start of the school year, and YYYY is the full year at the end of the school year. For the 18-19 school year, the value is 20182019.

Submitting the CEDARS Zip File to OSPI

To submit the CEDARS .zip file, PowerSchool customers must obtain access to OSPI's Secure FTP Server. Contact OSPI Customer Support at 1-800-725-4311 or CustomerSupport@k12.wa.us for assistance and information on the SFTP process.

The CEDARS files are submitted to OSPI as a single zip file that contains all 20 data files, using the following naming convention:

12345_0000_CEDARS_20190116_20182019.zip

The zip file is transmitted to OSPI in an encrypted format via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). Once the data reaches OSPI, it is validated and moved to the CEDARS data warehouse. Within the data warehouse, OSPI stores historical and current data. Exceptions are reported back to the district, where corrections to prior submissions are completed via resubmissions.

Report Input

For help with report navigation and generation, see How to Find and Generate a Report.

Field	Description
Subreports	Select which CEDARS subreports to run. All subreports are selected by default. A - Location File 2021-2022 B - District Student File 2021-2022 C - School Student File 2021-2022 D - Course Catalog File 2021-2022 E - Student Schedule File 2021-2022 F - Staff File 2021-2022 G - Staff Schedule File 2021-2022 H - Student Grade History File 2021-2022 I - Student Attributes and Programs File 2021-2022 J - English Learners File 2021-2022 K - Special Education Programs File 2021-2022 L - Student Ethnicity File 2021-2022 M - Student Race File 2021-2022 N - Student Absence File 2021-2022 Q - Student Growth File 2021-2022 R - Student Exclusionary Discipline File 2021-2022 S - Students Restrained or Isolated File 2021-2022 T - Non-traditional Student Credit Attempt File 2021-2022 U - Initial Evaluation and Eligibility Timelines File 2021-2022 V - Student Supports File 2021-2022
Select Schools	Select one of the following options: Current School Only – Includes all records associated with the current school that meet the selection criteria. To change the current school, click the School link at the top of the page and choose the appropriate school from the list. All Schools (default) – Includes all student records on the PowerSchool server that meet the selection criteria.
Current Selection Staff	Select which staff members to include in the report: The Selected [Number] Staff Only – Run the report for staff in the current selection. All Staff – Run the report for all staff in the current school or district that meet the selection criteria. If you are running the report for a single staff member, or a group of staff members, select the staff members before running the report.
Current Selection Students	Select which students to include in the report: The Selected [Number] Students Only – Run the report for students in the current selection. All Students – Run the report for all students in the current school or district that meet the selection criteria. If you are running the report for a single student, or a group of students, select the students before running the report.
Present Attendance Codes to include	Select the attendance codes to include in the report. To include all codes, leave all blank.
School Year	Select the year for which to run the report.
Default Course Number for Imported Historical Grades With Blank Course Number	Enter the default course number for historical grades that do not have an assigned associated course. This input is only used on the Historical Grades report.
Scheduling	Select Schedule to run the report on a specific date and time. The default selection is "Run Now."

Report Output

The report outputs a zip file containing all of the CEDARS files, A through R.