Updated information – September 2009 Alaska Department of Education & Early Development

 Brief Overview of NCLB, IDEA & state and federal laws & regulations related to this data collection  Overview of collection challenges that necessitated revised reporting mechanism  Highlight new reporting elements  Answer questions/troubleshoot

 Allows Alaska to determine Persistently Dangerous school status  Generates legislatively required reports, such as bullying data and truancy rates  Provides information to ensure equal protections for students with special needs

 State Laws and Regulations/NCLB  AS (b)  AS  4 AAC  Federal Laws – Gun-Free Schools Act (Subpart 3 of Title IV of the ESEA)  Unsafe School Choice Option/Uniform Management Information and Reporting System  IDEA 2004

 Web-based data collection system is faulty and EED does not have staff available to troubleshoot problems for users in a timely manner  Many districts utilizing the excel data dictionary in the past have submitted incomplete information  Incomplete submissions have not allowed EED to run valid and accurate reports

 Lack of understanding of the definitions of the firearms and the deadly weapons categories  Lack of understanding of the statutorily required consequences for firearm and deadly weapons  Noncompliance with days reported rounding to the nearest ½ day

 A significant number of districts are missing the June 30 th deadline for data submission – which will interfere with reimbursements from EED  Districts are not following the formatting guidelines from the data dictionary

 All districts are required to use the new Excel workbooks for reporting  Suspension and Expulsion data reporting has been separated from Truancy data reporting (separate workbooks)  Alaska Student ID number is the only number accepted – no district IDs

 Grade level must be reported for all students  Data element descriptions have been updated

 Lack of understanding of the responsibility of the school district to define unexcused absences  Lack of understanding of the need to only report each full day of unexcused absence

 Many districts are failing to comply with the truancy reporting requirement –which will be posted on the EED web site

 All districts are required to use the new Excel workbooks for reporting  Truancy data reporting has been separated from Suspension and Expulsion data reporting (separate workbooks)  Limiting the amount of information required for this reporting

 All districts reporting suspension, expulsion and truancy data need to submit using the EED workbooks in order to satisfy the reporting requirements.  EED will work with users to seek reasonable remedies for transferability of data between systems (i.e. PowerSchool)  Data needs to be checked thoroughly before submitting. Inaccurate submissions will be returned.

Todd Brocious Terri Campbell