August 6, 2020 | General News
In the July 7, 2020 newsletter we informed school districts that the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) would undertake detailed comparisons of the end of year submissions of the 684, 638, and 600 data collections with current SIF collected data, with a goal of viable automated SIF-based submissions for these collections from all districts by the beginning of the 2021-22 school year. This goal aligns with WDE's strategy to reduce district's data burden.
The WDE has worked with our six pilot districts and are now preparing to provide comparison reports to all districts. As part of this process, the WDE has rolled over it's SIF operational data store to 2020-21. Please let the WDE know when your district has completed the rollover of the student information system (SIS) to the 2020-21 school year and have restarted the SIF agent. The WDE will then issue a request for the current years' objects, and your district will be in sync with the WDE to receive WISER IDs and exchange data for the coming year.
This will also allow the SIS to automatically send new enrollments to WDE and also to TIDE. If your district is having issues rolling forward the SIF agents, contact the respective SIS vendor for the district. Contact Fred Hirsch at fred.hirsch1@wyo.gov to confirm your data connectivity and flow through to the WDE and TIDE. This process needs to occur before your Assessment Coordinator can roster students in TIDE. This process needs to occur before your Assessment Coordinator can roster students in TIDE.
The WDE will be conducting an upgrade of core software systems on Friday, August 21. Realtime services such as WISER ID retrieval should be expected to be unavailable beginning at 8 a.m. on August 21. These services will be available again on 8 a.m. Monday, August 24.
The WDE posted the Wyoming Interoperabile Data System (WINDS) SIF Transparency Document on the Data and Reporting page under the Important Links header. This document describes the transfer mechanism and validations that the agency uses to automate the collection of WY-TOPP and WISER ID Roster data as well as the automation and collection of the WDE638, WDE684, and WDE600 data elements.
This living document will continue to evolve as the project advances. To provide constructive feedback, email Susan Williams at susan.williams@wyo.gov.
The WDE will release a confidential version of the school performance report on August 13 in the Confidential Accountability portal. Schools will not receive an overall school performance rating, but will receive their school's indicator performance within the established WAEA target levels and the ESSA norm categories for the indicators that the WDE is able to calculate. This data will not be used for accountability purposes but is being provided to districts for their internal use.
The WDE will accept district feedback on calculated indicators August 13–26, although the district review is not required.
Schedule a Course Code Review meeting with Susan Williams, if you haven't done so yet.
Also:
Districts are encouraged to include curriculum coordinators, student information system (SIS) managers, and any personnel who enter course information in your SIS. Districts will be required to use the state approved course codes in the 2021-22 school year.
Through this review we hope to accomplish the following:
- Ensure districts are using the appropriate SCED code to describe their courses.
- Eliminate the use of ambiguous course codes.
- Help the state to identify areas where SCED codes don't meet the districts needs to help with the creation of Wyoming specific course codes.
For more information, contact Susan Williams at 307-777-6252 or susan.williams@wyo.gov.
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August 13-26: School Performance Report Review Window - NOT REQUIRED
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September 1: Public School Performance Report Release - CANCELLED
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September 15-October 15: WDE949 & WDE950 collection window (revised collection dates)
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TBD: SIS User Conference
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