1. Data Collection Changes for the 2016-17 school year
Melissa Marino
Data Collection Supervisor
June 2016
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

2. Agenda
General announcements and reminders to prepare for the October collection
SIF expectations for
Data collection changes and updates for the school year
SIMS changes
EPIMS changes
SSDR changes
Contact information and questions
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

3. Reminders for October
Updated versions of the data handbooks will be posted this summer. For October, remember to refer to the updated data handbooks and error lists to help with your data submission.
Remember to do a clean up of Directory Administration for your district to reflect any necessary changes for the new school year.
Also remember to add ‘SIMS Contact’ and/or ‘EPIMS Contact’ functions to your security portal access if you want to be included in data collection related communication from ESE.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

4. SIF Timeline & Expectations
Districts that are live in SIF in the beginning of the school year will be expected to submit SIMS, SCS, SSDR via SIF
October 2016 will be our first attempt at reporting and certifying EPIMS via SIF. We plan to reach out to a couple of districts per SIS vendor to work with them on EPIMS SIF submission. Legacy flat file will be available for SIF districts to submit October EPIMS.
ESE Data Collection and the SIF support team plan to work closely with the SIS vendors to help the selected districts complete their October EPIMS submission via SIF.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

5. Acceptable Values: F - Female M - Male N - Nonbinary **new value
SIMS DOE009: Gender
Acceptable Values: F - Female M - Male N - Nonbinary **new value
Female - Individuals who identify as a girl or a woman.
Male - Individuals who identify as a boy or a man.
Nonbinary - Individuals who don't identify as just female or male.
Submit any changes to a student’s demographic data through the SASID File Exchange dropbox or edit an individual record online via Single Student Registration
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

6. New SIMS element DOE041: SLIFE
A student should be identified as SLIFE if all of the following criteria are met:
The student is an English language learner as defined in G.L. c. 71A, §2(d).
Is aged 8 to 21 years
Entered a United States school after grade 2. or Exited the United States for six months or more.
Prior exposure to formal schooling is characterized by
no formal schooling, or
interruptions in formal schooling, defined as at least two or fewer years of schooling than their typical peers, or
consistent, but limited formal schooling.
Functions two or more years below expected grade level in native language literacy relative to typical peers.
Functions two or more years below expected grade level in numeracy relative to typical peers.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

7. DOE041: SLIFE
This element will be used to identify English Language Learner students who have limited or interrupted formal education Acceptable Values: 00 No 01 Yes
Questions about specific students and whether their background fits the definition of SLIFE should be directed to
David Valade
Sara Nino
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

8. SIMS Summer Exits
ESE will no longer require that summer exit records reported in October be carried forward all school year (dropouts and transfers).
Summer exits that are reported in October SIMS do not need to be repeated in March or EOY SIMS collections unless there is a change or correction to be made in the enrollment status. New summer exits can be reported in March and EOY if they are a correction to a record that was misreported in a previous collection.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

9. SIMS Summer Exits
For legacy flat file: this means no longer having to manually add summer exit records to March and EOY SIMS files
For SIF: this means that summer exit records will not be extracted as part of your March and EOY data submissions unless the record is a change from what was submitted in the prior period.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

10. SIMS SIF: Scheduling School
A SchoolFocus element will be added to the SchoolInfo object with a value of “Scheduling”.
Benefit: This will allow districts to indicate that a particular school within their SIS is a “scheduling” school and that there are students within that school that actually attend a different school. This “scheduling” indicator will allow ESE to know that the attending school field should be looked at for the enrollment records linked to the SchoolInfo object of the scheduling school.
Common example of this set-up is out placements. In your SIS, the overarching outplacement “school” should be indicated as the “scheduling school”. All the students within that have their appropriate school codes in the attending school field.
The aim of this approach is to reduce the amount of SIMS errors produced by differences in the attending school field vs the enrolling/scheduling school within the SIS.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

11. SIMS SIF: Homeless Flag
A homeless flag element will be added to the StudentPersonal object. This will be an optional field with a yes or no value.
Benefit: If this element is populated, it will help ESE to accurately identify homeless students who are receiving targeted Title I assistance.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

12. Acceptable Values: F - Female M - Male N - Nonbinary **new value
EPIMS ID05: Gender
Acceptable Values: F - Female M - Male N - Nonbinary **new value
Female - Individuals who identify as a girl or a woman.
Male - Individuals who identify as a boy or a man.
Nonbinary - Individuals who don't identify as just female or male.
This new value will be a coding option in EPIMS ID Maintenance when updating characteristics for a MEPID.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

13. Discontinued EPIMS SR35
SR35 – Educator Evaluation Plan will no longer be collected. It will be a discontinued element.
For legacy flat file: this means a mandatory value of 99 is required for all staff roster records.
For SIF: this means that the field will be optional for transmission and will be automatically set to 99 once the data is received by ESE
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

14. EPIMS SIF: Work Assignment Dates
In the StaffAssignment object, the "MAAssignmentStartDate" and "MAAssignmentEndDate" extended elements will be discontinued.
The assignment start and end dates should be reported instead in JobStartDate and JobEndDate elements.
This change should be transparent to SIS users. There is no change in what we’re collecting here. This change is to fit those dates into the standard SIF structure rather than use extended elements.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

15. SSDR Offense Type
There will be a new additional value for Type of Offense element (OT1 – OT5)
**New Value code 19 = felony complaint (charge) outside of school
This value is being added to distinguish between felony charges and the existing code 16 which is for felony convictions outside of school.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

16. Discontinued SSDR: ERDX
The ERDX (Extra Suspension Days) field will be discontinued and no longer used
For legacy flat file: this means that the field can be null. No value is required.
For SIF: this means that the extended element for ERDX will be dropped
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

17. SSDR: ERDX
In cases where there is an emergency removal and extra suspension days are given to the student after a hearing, the data should be reported in 2 separate discipline records
One discipline record for the emergency removal, with a start date, return date and days missed (only up to 3 days for emergency removal)
A second record for the subsequent out of school (or in-school) suspension with its own start date, return date and days missed
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

18. SSDR SIF: Incident Reporter
IncidentReporter/Name element will be added to the DisciplineIncident object. This will be an optional field.
Benefit: If this element is populated with the name/username of the person who entered the incident information into the SIS, this will be displayed on the SSDR SIF error reports so that the users can easily filter the incidents by incident reporter.
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

19. Questions?
My contact information:
Melissa Marino
(781)
Data Collection Support:
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education