Breakout Meetings & Notes

Owned by Sean Casey
Last updated: Dec 01, 2021
8 min read



Next Steps Coming out of SIG meeting 2

  • Reach out to smaller groups to get feedback about what is the one feature that will get used and provide value to the main user “counselor”. Sean has Ann scheduling this for us. 2 meetings (unless we can’t find common times, in which case we’ll meet with 2-3 at a time)


Gather One group of implementers (partners who have built/implemented CCMR tools):

Objective: 

To answer: in your CCMR work, which functionality has the most usage? And by which key end user role?

And Provide: a soft commitment to to use the data requirements of the kit or partner with an LEA to do so and use the kit

*Note, make the point that we don’t intend to compete on the tool with implementation partners. We want them to use the underlying data requirements to unlock source system vendors with a consistent ask. Show/mention the SKIP badge that’s for that purpose for them.

      • Region10 / Eduphoric
      • Wisconsin DPI
      • Ed Analytics: Andrew Rice
      • Instructure: Tracy
      • EdWire? Jean Francois



One group of EdOrgs (most vocal/participatory agencies with clear requirements)

Objectives: 

To answer: What is the narrowest slice of functionality that would get adopted & used (and be useful)? And which is the most critical end user role to serve with that functionality?

And Provide: a soft commitment to try/test and to use the kit.

      • Roshni BPS
      • John Watson San Diego
      • Molly INSITE
      • Hemina Long Beach (and Victoria )
      • Missy Grand Prairie ISD



Meeting 3 (breakout) 9-14-2021

NOTES (Molly INSITE, Roshni BPS, Missy GPISD, and John SDCOE 9-14-2021)

  • Roshni - lot of focus on tracking graduation plans and tracking on / off track
    • That’s a big pain point for them. They need it for every student.
    • That may be more important than “college readiness” - on track to graduate & earn a diploma is a fundamental requirement for college readiness
    • Access and participation is important, in addition to performance. E.g. did kids participate in AP Courses, whether or not they took the AP exam or passed it?
  • Molly - they’re also struggling with what their end user counselors need.
    • They’ve been trying to build something like what we showed from SPISD graduation plan tracker. But it is very difficult to build.
    • What about what’s not in the ODS? Like did they complete a work based learning activity for example? 
  • Missy - 2 major pain points
    • How many students are electing to participate or not, or to what degree in the offerings, to drive equity efforts and to equip counselors to find patterns, drive more participation & eventually see if the impact to outcomes starts to increase.
    • This is unique and not served by their slate of other tools with some CCMR functionality
    • Career pathways as indicators would be valuable too
    • Info from so many places/sources. How to consolidate and use it.
    • CCMR Insights tool is working for them with meet TX requirements. Their OnDataSuite has a CCMR tracker (not 100% complete or real time). They also have a data warehouse type tool with a CCMR component but not 100% complete. Too many tools, and they aren’t everything they need.
    • GPISD provides SAT for all kids in junior year.
    • What percentage of students participated in these readiness indicators? They have to manually combine that information. They aren't really doing this work today. E.g. Out of 2100 graduates they don’t really combine the participation data which would help view this readiness in a more comprehensive way.
  • John - very interested in the starter kit as a tinker toy he can pull apart and see how to make a useful tool for their purposes. Metrics and value management underneath is valuable to them, so they can tune them. 
    • Districts want leading indicator data to improve a student’s trajectory/outlook/path.
    • A lot of the data is semi annual or annual.
    • A-G is a complex set of reqs. It is a threshold req for Cal state universities enrollment. 
    • What are the LEADING indicators?
    • AP course credit and scores, SAT
    • A personal graduation plan need is arising for them as well. The checklist we showed from Spring Branch ISD was interesting to them, and it could be useful for A-G requirements. 


Synthesis from 9-14-2021 LEA meeting

  • 2 key pain points emerged:
  1. Early indicators that focus on participation and equity in opportunities that lead to college readiness. E.g. enrolling in AP courses.
  • What percentage of students participated in these readiness indicators? They have to manually combine that information. They aren't really doing this work today. E.g. Out of 2100 graduates they don’t really combine the participation data which would help view this readiness in a more comprehensive way.
  • How many students are electing to participate or not, or to what degree in the offerings, to drive equity efforts and to equip counselors to find patterns, drive more participation & eventually see if the impact to outcomes starts to increase.
  • This is unique and not served by their slate of other tools with some CCMR functionality
  • This is all data “before the score” e.g. an SAT score confirms that kids already thought about college readiness enough to take the test (like confirmation bias). This approach would be a way to track participation of all kids earlier in the process and drive more participation and more readiness overall.
  • Users = HS counselors, HS school administrators, district administrator
  1. Personal graduation plans and how to track and manage those for all HS students.



Meeting 4 (LEA breakout 2 - Long Beach USD) 9-15-2021

  • Long Beach USD has a lot of student mobility and variance in their data
  • The course history is not standardized and it's difficult as they are a suburban district that has a lot of mobility.
  • They don’t struggle with source data so much as the configuration flexibility they need to have for their school based requirements, using SAT, PSAT, several GPA calculation indexes, they use the GPAs as indexes
  •  A through G GPA
  • Each college has a competitive index (You are a high competitive student you should go to a highly competitive school)
  • Sounds like Long Beach is ahead of their peers in this work. They worked with Spotlight Ed and were able to use that CCMR tool because of their advanced computation / configuration capabilities for their campuses. Other districts struggled because they didn’t have those same capabilities or data entry/management consistent practices.
  • Major pain point is their schools have autonomy for a lot of the requirements, like course sequences and other course requirements that are different per HS campus and counselors teams. And even programs / pathways, based on “class of …” requirements that change and roll in and become active with certain graduation classes
  • Ask about these ideas:
    • Very valuable to her
    • The PDF based and paper based format is painful for them. For students, staff, lots of cost involved. 
    • Highest priority for her of the 3
    • If flexible enough to configure per campus, yes this would be useful.
    • But what does the SIS already do that this doesn’t duplicate, or does? How would their SIS populate it?
    • What if we also had a Personal college plan idea. What’s my plan? Who’s done their FAFSA? Where will/have they applied? NSC data afterward, etc.
    • Her idea was to have 2 sides of the coin - personal graduation plan, and “my college plan”
    • Loader for survey and assessment data to bring in a batch of the data for the college plan (like FAFSA, Common App) 
    • Priority 3 (but will require tons of flexibility and configuration capability)
    • This idea resonates and would help with more participation with district equity efforts, and hopefully driving more college readiness awareness and outcomes
    • Talk with Noah Bookman about this. They have a college ready index that they’re using 
    • Would help with a EWS as early as 8th grade
    • Priority 2
    • Digital transcript exchange
    • Personal graduation plan and management
    • Participation in early indicators


Meeting 5 (Internal) with Eric, David, Douglas, Emilio 9-15-21

Re: CCMR and digital transcript exchange

  • Trying to capture requirements that many people have opinions and different expectations for
    • But they all represent local customizations
  • Transcript is the universal thing 
  • Can we make use of the transcript as a universally valuable thing to the field/community
  • Some large percentage of SIS’s can do a dump of all the data for a transcript to the ODS
  • 2 gotchas from transcript model today
    • Multiple GPAs introduced (weighted, unweighted, etc.), and depends on Ed-Fi version and whether their SIS can provide/support that
    • The domain and person entering the course record into the transcript often uses the code from the original district. Not mapping it to your own local code. You can turn that resolution on/off. Can enter a course reference that will not resolve. 



Meeting 6 (with Implementation Partners (JF, John Raub DPI, Traci))

  • JF/EdGraph
    • Missouri and early adopter districts are where they’re focusing on this use case. They’re basing their work off state requirements and wanting to spread to all LEAs in MO.
    • Suspects that there will be a metrics/calculations base for each state.
  • Traci/Instructure
    • Building CCR with configurable indicators. Had A-G and UC/CSU settings out of the box
    • Indicator driven. Some are state specific, some are universal. 
    • Data sourcing is one of the huge challenges. They’re tackling a CALPADS import to help with some of that data sourcing.
    • Especially the CTE data is challenging, often in spreadsheets in districts.
  • John Raub/WI DPI
    • Career and college readiness dashboards are the end user focused tool lit up by their CCMR work.
    • They have a lot of data, are getting a lot of data but aren’t really using it as indicators to drive predictors for their tools. Some of the data goes to research rather than end user tools
  • Leading indicators
    • 8 in CA. Are they on a CTE pathway or a college track?
    • 3 ACT benchmarks (WI DPI) about whether they go to college
  • Data gaps that would help unlock Instructure and EdGraph’s work
    • Course characteristics
    • Pathways
    • Graduation plans and required credits
    • Credit category in the transcript
    • Matching local course codes with state course codes (WI does this and stores it in the ODS, with a lookup tool for LEAs and via API). https://dpi.wi.gov/wise/data-elements/coursereference 
    • It’s a lot of work for districts to do the matching of local course codes with state course codes
  • Graduation plan tracking 
    • Might be even more complicated 
  • Transcript exchange - not a high priority for this implementer partner group
  • Priorities
    • E.g. simple configuration options for the context relevance
    • More data / data gaps addressed
    • How do we make it easy as possible for others to make use of the kit
    • Would love to see a data loader or loaders come along with this because it’s captured in district tools but maybe not the SIS.
    • As easy as possible for everyone to use. Is the data part of the certified SIS payload already?




Meeting 7 (breakout 2 with Implementation Partners) 9-28-2021

To answer: What is the narrowest slice of functionality that would get adopted & used (and be useful)? And which is the most critical end user role to serve with that functionality?

And Provide: a soft commitment to try/test and to use the kit.

Some real time challenges today ESC10 is facing:

  • Not getting the whole course transcript from 2 certified SIS vendors (Skyward and Focus in v3 but appeared to work in their v2 ODS/API
  • Missing some credit data
  • Incomplete transcript data
  • **Interested in solving the problem of student’s assessment data being available to them asap, automated, and even across districts when they move
  • Data model has not been very limiting for them and the TEA implementation should clean up the context that ESC10 operates within. TEA’s extension IS (or will be) what ESC10 will use, so they don’t have the same problem the cross-state providers like EA and Eduphoric have.
  • Getting clean assessment data on the side


EA:

  • The CCMR data model is not good enough for what we want to do. Should that be the focus instead of an end user tool?
  • Needs to be API data out based (not direct database access)
  • Does like the personal graduation plan doc Douglas showed but doesn’t know / doubts if the data model supports that today, and if counselors could trust that if the data wasn’t sourced clearly for it.
  • Having the whole transcript (complete transcript record) in the data model would also solve the exchange mechanism by default
  • **if we tackle the raw data and the sourcing of it from the SIS, and leave the business rules for the implementers to 
  • SC is trying to drive CCMR definition statewide for SEA and LEAs and Andrew will invite us to a meeting


Eduphoric

  • Also thinks the data model is insufficient per analysis for portability of CCMR insights tool to CA and other contexts.
  • Thinks the counselor tool for the personal grad plan Douglas showed is valuable.