SWG 2022-07-19 Meeting

Participation

Support

Nancy Wilson, Ann Su - Ed-Fi Governance Support

Meeting recording Link

The meeting was held 2022-07-19 3:00Pm -4:15pm CT via WebEx

Agenda and Notes

• Refer to the Meeting PPT for important information

• Sayee will be sending out an agenda the week before for your input; Michigan SEA: I really appreciate getting the agenda as far in advance as possible so I can recruit others to join me on the call. 
• 504 Participation - DE to share how they are capturing student’s participation in 504.  We will share how other states are capturing this.
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  • 504 eligibility typically/usually but not always includes accommodations. 
  • ND only indicates 504 on program association with no additional information. 
  • Accommodations for assessment purposes are documented. 
  • Indiana has a 504 program and then allows schools to provide accommodations as needed
    • Side note for IN - 504 program is not the only reason a school may need to report accommodations (assessment accommodations specifically). 
    • EL students in IN may need accommodations provided without having an IEP as do some other choice students. 
  • SC - For 504, SC collects "the primary life function in which the student is most substantially limited according to documentation of disability" - student’s plan addresses the limitation and they are not special ed
    • also, an indicator that marks "if the student is eligible for 504 services but does not have a formal 504 Plan in place."
    • Statewide IEP has not been integrated with Ed-Fi ODS; indicator shows if student is being served in special education environment and is an indicator used for subgroup reporting and such
  • NE uses StudentCharacteristic to indicate that the student is in 504 plan.  No additional fields in 504 are needed.  
  • WI use StudentProgramAssociation to collect the 504 information.  No additional fields are needed.  If Accommodation is a main requirement for 504, AssessmentRoster.StudentAssessmentRegistration can be used for this
    • If specific for the assessment vendor, we can consider adding as an extension. 
    • We have a warning in WISEdata Portal for when a student has both an active IEP and Section 504 plan which overlaps for some or all of the school year. Typically a student would not have both a 504 plan and an IEP active at the same time.
    • https://dpi.wi.gov/wise/data-elements/section504 
  • 504 kept separate from special education association appears to be 
  • Sayee: Should we do a survey to find out how different states handle the 504 data?
  • DE next step: for 23-24 school year talk with program staff on what is being reported to see if that is accurate and meets their needs - will continue to research this in-house and will circle back with Sayee later in the school year 
  • SC is another not yes/no state; some states are flagging the student and/or accommodation data
  • Does Ed-Fi need to capture more data for 504 status?
  • AZ - told 504 is under Office of Civil Rights and not included in special education data
•  API Evolution Presentation – We will share what was presented at the TAG.
  •  Major breaking change cycle is 4 years
  •  Major Problems to Solve:
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  • Minimum breaking changes on the SIS side  and more on the  assessment side with an early access release to receive feedback in August 2022 with final release of 4.0 in early November 2022 for 23-24
    • Can operationalize for next school year
  • What should the life cycle be for a release - how many years should a single release be supported?  More than 2 years for a major breaking change release but not yet decided exact number of years - TAG is working on this
  • What do we ask vendors to support - a maximum of 2 versions so going to get the 6.1 version when this is released; want to have vendors finish production schedule in enough time
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  • SC - How does the extended support years impact the upgrade paths? 
    • Practice is to publish specification in September using release from previous December
    • Support will continue for next 3 school years and then the expectation is that you will upgrade
    • Having 2 approaches and depends on where a state wants to be: these are not taking into consideration the upgrades on the SIS side but instead are talking about where we are heading on ODS/API side - have we taken into consideration what impact this has on the SIS versions - will get an answer on migration path 
  • DE - What do we do with assessment vendors for 22-23 SY for the 23-24 SY concerning the upcoming release? Supporting a sandbox this year for next year to support the development process.
    • Recommended approach is to take early access to the latest version.
  • AZ - supports current version plus prior 3 years
  • Audrey Shay (WI) Is anyone collecting all of their school years in one ODS? We have three years open (AZ has 4 years). We will take incremental (minor) changes but will not migrate any previous school years with breaking changes because of all of the systems that rely on that standard. If breaking changes occur every year, there will be 3 versions that vendors will have to support.
  • Requests from SEA WG:
    • Do not have breaking changes each year. Concern what is shared in the graph. 
    • Vendors supporting 2 versions is not enough. 
  • Does every 4 years cycle work? No, there should be changes more frequently. 
  • At a minimum 2 years would be better than breaking changes every year. 
  • MI - Is there a need to align with the USED/EDFacts release patterns? 
  • SC - tough balance between releases and major changes in structure so 4.2 release could add addendum go; need point releases in a reasonable manner without breaking changes
    • WI - I agree- expansion each year is just fine, but breaking each year is a problem. 
  • SUMMARY to bring back to TAG
    • No major breaking changes every year
    • Keep life cycle 2 or 3 years
    • Alliance to work with the vendors to have support provided for at least 3 versions  
• What’s new in Data Standard 4.0a. (TO BE DISCUSSED AT NEXT MEETING)

Action Items:

• Sayee to  send slide deck for members to provide feedback and comments back to Sayee

Next meeting: 8/4/2022 1:00-2:15pm CT

Last Update: 12 Sep 2022