Utah Student Records Exchange

Background and Needs

For the past two school years, Utah has had a fully functioning statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) employing the eight key components prescribed by Institute of Education Sciences' (IES) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The system has also fulfilled nine of ten data quality components specified by the Data Quality Campaign jointly sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officials (CCSSO). The tenth component, the integration of the statewide student identifier with postsecondary schools is also now implemented in a limited manner but will be fully realized with the advent of the USRE.

A vital SLDS depends more than anything on the efficient and accurate exchange of student level data. However, student records/transcript exchanges as students move from one local education agency (LEA) to another is neither automated nor uniform in Utah. Currently, LEAsmust deal with paper transcripts hand carried by the new student or sent by the former LEA. This process is error prone, labor intensive and requires judgments about meanings and accuracy of data. It is crucial for these data to be timely and of high quality for good school accountability and student performance/achievement measures. Currently, student records are collected four times a year by the Utah State Office of Education (USOE) in electronic batches of data. While this is done in a uniform and controlled manner, the process would greatly benefit from a more standards based and automated architecture for greater speed andflexibility. Fast, quality student records/transcripts are also important for postsecondary applications and registrations. Today, this process is only automated for some applications.

Services and Benefits

The USRE system would produce the following services and benefits for Utah's SLDS by relying on national and international standards such as the School Interoperability Frame (SIF) to integrate Utah's LEAs, postsecondary institutions and the USOE:

All stakeholders will be able to use national standards for student record/transcript exchanges. Doing so will improve data quality on all levels and for all processes, reporting, and research.

Each LEA's student information system (SIS) and the USOE Data Clearinghouse and Warehouse will be enabled with software, servers and trained staff that will allow for rapid (non-batch) and on-demand exchange of student records between any two LEAs or between the LEAs and the USOE. This can be accomplished with any subset of students.

Through a transcript broker/server service LEAs will be able to electronically send a transcript to any Utah public postsecondary institution and most out of state postsecondary institutions. It will also allow for the exchange of transcripts/records with out of state LEAs.

Currently, states send EDFacts data through the Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN) which is a very large collection of aggregate or computed data points. The USOE proposes to work with the EDFacts to submit student level data in SIF objects instead of these complex files.

Electronic records/transcripts will result in a higher rate of notification and accuracy about transfer students as well as dropouts and students exiting for other reasons. Receivingcomplete electronic transcripts with course taking records and grades will also improve student placements and interventions.