STUDENT INFORMATION: Automated Special Education Records

By Andrea Kunkel, CCOSA General Counsel & ODSS Executive Director

OSDE’s Special Education Services Section continues to work with partners to fully integrate local student information into EDPlan, the state’s special education record-keeping system. Contractors anticipate that the integration project will be fully implemented around May 1. Information about the project and its impact is important to superintendents and other operational leadership, special education directors and student information system (SIS) administrators.

This work is expected to create a more automated system that provides more timely transfer of special education records, reduces data entry and results in cleaner data, both for the state and for district use. The primary expected benefit is a reduced workload across the state at all levels. From a district perspective, this means that school staff members who’ve had to devote significant time to manual data entry may have additional time to spend on other tasks. The project should also deliver an almost fully automated update and transfer process, personal details in EDPlan that match the SIS record and enrollments and exits that process in a more timely manner in standard cases.

From a special education perspective, the primary challenge is that dependence on SIS data entry will increase. Employees entering data will have an even greater obligation to make sure student and parent information is correct since mistakes may have significant consequences. Just for example, Student Testing Numbers (STNs) must be accurate in EdPlan or special education records may be transferred to the incorrect student file.

From a local perspective, the biggest challenge may be that pre-enrollment transfers will be limited. When a new student moves into a district, manual transfers of documents will not likely happen. So the situation in which a new district with an earlier start date is awaiting the transfer of records from the former district with a much later start date will be challenging. The SIS/WAVE/EdPlan integration will not release the student from the former district until it starts school unless someone from that district enters into their SIS that the student has withdrawn – a solution that requires manpower.

The OSDE-SES data team has several ideas to address this issue. Just for example, if the system automatically exited the student from the former district and sent records to the new district as soon as the student enrolled there, that would be an advantage to the new district that would address the pre-enrollment transfer issue. But if the student is still going to attend school in the “former” district and didn’t plan to begin attending classes in the new district for six weeks, it would disadvantage the “former” district, which still needs the records. Interested district stakeholders will need to discuss the options before a final decision is made, to make sure it provides the greatest benefit and causes the least harm.

Although much is known about how this integration will work, there are still some unknown areas. And with any major change, there is always the small possibility of unexpected negative consequences. School personnel can best prepare for implementation by taking advantage of the resources OSDE-SES has developed. Links to the Full SIS-WAVE- EDPlan Integration Guidance document and the recorded SIS-WAVE-EDPlan Integration Informational Session can be found at https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/OKSDE/bulletins/2ca45db.

For further information about the integration project, contact a member of the OSDE-SES data team.