Updated state computer system frustrates districts during student testing period
A major update last month on the state’s primary student data collection system, CALPADS, caused data outages and errors in many districts at one of the busiest times of the year. State leaders representing the districts told the state that some of the districts considered the system “unusable.”
The California Department of Education has acknowledged the frustration created by the release and says it is working to resolve the issues. But, expressing a common complaint, an administrator in a Southern California district said the severity of the failures goes beyond long-term solutions and inconveniences. Rick Roberts, executive director of educational technology services for the Grossmont Union High School District, said the problems are affecting the ability to administer Smarter Balanced tests to some students and are undermining confidence that CALPADS will accurately process information in the coming years. months.
“The end of the year (calendar) is at stake,” he said. “This insurance looks like a year in which the data is suspicious, at best.”
CALPADS, California’s Longitudinal Student Achievement Data System, has been the battlehorse of data since 2009. It houses much of the student information that the state collects, including attendance, courses taken, test scores, and accountability data required by the federal government and the state. But it has been working under increasing data load and the state has planned a change that promises to substantially improve system performance and reduce the time it takes to publish data loaded on the system.
It is unclear why the department chose in mid-April, during Smarter Balanced testing, a peak period for the use of CALPADS for conversion. A spokesman for the department initially said the U.S. Department of Education was pressuring the state to do the job, but the state department later clarified that this was not the case.
In an April 22 letter to the district, county education office and charter schools, Jerry Winkler, director of the department’s Education Data Management Division, wrote that the department “recognized the risk of implementing such significant changes in the system during halfway through the evaluation season “. but that it was crucial to have the update underway before the year-end data submission period.
“The CDE also apologizes for the larger number of defects than currently desired in the system. Some of these defects are related to the complexity of migrating data from many years to a new data structure,” he wrote.
Districts began filing complaints after CALPADS was put back into service on April 18, two weeks after it was withdrawn for the upgrade, one week longer than expected. After continuing to receive reports from the districts, Vernon Billy, CEO of the California School Board Association, and Edgar Zazueta, executive director of the California School Board Association, wrote to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who oversees the department. May 9. expressing his “deep concern.”
“Our members report experiencing significant challenges with CALPADS in recent weeks, to the point that some feel the system is currently unusable,” they wrote.
Among the issues they cited:
Districts have been unable to keep up with the changes and updates to individualized education programs for special education students who dictate accommodation for Smarter Balanced testing. This could affect the ability of special education students to receive the correct accommodations while taking the tests.
Students traveling to schools or districts received multiple student identification numbers, delayed testing, or in some cases required students to repeat Smarter Balanced testing.
Districts reported numerous errors loading data into the revised system, which required lengthy manual corrections.
“These challenges have reached a critical mass far beyond the capabilities of IT departments and are affecting operational functions at the district and school levels,” Billy and Zazueta wrote. Small districts without staff and experience to address the issues were the hardest hit, they said.
Two days after the letter was sent, senior department officials met with organizations to address the issues and held another meeting this week detailing how they were addressing the issues.
Roberts and David Feliciano, superintendent of La Mesa-Spring Valley schools, said school districts are concerned that data problems with student identification numbers and special education students could jeopardize their ability to comply with 95% required participation rate in Smarter Balanced tests, invoking federal sanctions. Only a handful or a few dozen students who miss the tests or refuse to take them could push a district below the threshold, they said.
But U.S. Department of Education exemptions are unlikely, the department told administrators at this week’s meeting.
“We continue to engage in dialogue with the CDE, and hope that districts can avoid sanctions beyond their control,” said Troy Flint, information director of the school board association.
Flint and Zazueta said this week that they appreciated that the department responded quickly to their letter and that they were dealing with the issues urgently. But they continue to hear complaints daily from the districts.
“We understand that technology updates can take time and create challenges, but the problems remain,” Flint said.
Roberts and Feliciano are pessimistic.
The department “hears from us, but they’re not close enough to the students to understand what the impact really is,” Roberts said. “We’ve been told things are being fixed, but they’re not really being fixed.”
Feliciano, who was a technology administrator before becoming superintendent, considered it “discouraging” that the department should not return to the existing system after finding significant issues with the launch.
The department’s approach was “gentlemanly, putting aside worries and problems,” he said.
Updated state computer system frustrates districts during student testing period Source link Updated state computer system frustrates districts during student testing period
