Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome to the preparing the data file lesson on the Montana Early Warning System.
This lesson is specifically designed for schools that have the District Edition of Infinite Campus., which allows the schools
to store all of the required attendance, grades, and behavior data in Infinite Campus. If you are not an Infinite Campus user,
there are other lessons on the data file preparation that will suit your needs. In this lesson we will cover how to prepare the data file
that needs to be uploaded into GEMS to use the EWS. If you have any questions or concerns about the
Montana Early Warning System, please contact Eric Meredith at 406-444-3642 or email at emeredith@mt.gov.
The upload process occurs on the EWS Overview page, but only in GEMS Secure. This is the only difference between the Secure
and public version of GEMS on the EWS Overview page, there is a space in the Secure version to upload your data file.
The data file is an excel spreadsheet and must be in a specific format. The Early Warning System Data File Template
that is available for download on this page does display the correct format. We will cover more on the format of this file later in the lesson.
There are 10 data elements that must go into the data file, 9 of them are variables about each student and 1 is the identifier so the EWS
knows which student to attach the data to. The identification variable is the state student ID number.
The other 9 are attendance, grades and behavior data that OPI does not collect for each individual in the state.
This data is needed to use the EWS, however it is not a requirement to have data on every variable for every student.
The EWS has measures that account for missing data. For example if a student is new in your school
you may not know the number of F’s the student received during the previous term, the EWS will account for this.
However, the more accurate and complete data that can be provided for each student, the better the EWS results will be.
Here are some specifics on each data element, including examples of how that data element should look.
Most of the data variables are self explanatory. One key thing to recognize in many of these variables is that it uses a count number of
events of some kind in a certain amount of days. Those days are calendar days, not school days.
So for example the number of absences in the past 60 days is not over the past 60 school days but the past 60 calendar days,
or roughly two months. The only exception to this is that days over the summer break are not counted as calendar days.
This is done so at the beginning of the school year the students count will not always be zero
and will actually look at the last 60 calendar days of the previous school year.
We should also clarify what CreditsYear and OnTrack are. These two variables are both used in the EWS and are related to each other.
The credits per year variable is exactly what it says. The number of high school credits earned towards graduation per year.
So for example a junior at the beginning of the school year that has earned 12 credits, has a credit per year of 6 or 12 divided by 2.
This variable is updated at the end of every semester. On Track is a variable to determine if a student is on track to graduate,
based on the number of credits they have earned. This variable is just a Yes or No variable.
OnTrack does not take into effect what those credits are, just the total credits. So a student missing an English class could potentially still
be marked as OnTrack. OnTrack uses the credits per year variable to determine if the student is onTrack.
For example a school requiring 22 credits to graduate would mean a student needs to average 5.5 credits per year or more
to attain that. If their credits per year is above 5.5 then they are On Track to graduate.
It is also very important to understand that there is a difference between a blank space in the data file and a 0.
A blank space designates that the specific data variable for that student is unknown. A 0 designates that the count of that data variable is
in fact 0. For example a student with no A grades received in the previous term will have a 0 in the column for “PrevtermA’s” and a student
where it is not known how many A’s the student received the previous term will have a blank space in that column.
This is an important difference in getting the correct EWS results.
The good news is if you are a District Edition user of Infinite Campus there is an easy way to get the data file needed for the EWS.
The Office of Public Instruction (OPI) has worked with Infinite Campus to develop a data extract that will pull the exact data you need
for the EWS in the correct format.
The extract only works if you are entering the needed data into Infinite Campus, such as grades, attendance, and behavior.
In order for the extract to work correctly all your settings in Infinite Campus must be set up a certain way; such as telling Infinite Campus
exactly which grades are considered an “A” so that it can count all the previous term A’s correctly in the data extract.
This is a one-time setup process and once done will greatly simplify the process of getting the EWS data.
If you roll over and use the same settings in the following school years you will not have to set this up again.
The explanation of the settings that need to be adjusted start in the “Required Data Setup” section.
It can be found by clicking the link at the top of the page or scrolling to about the halfway point of the document.
Feel free to check out the rest of the document as it explains in detail the data that is being extracted from the system.
Contact OPI if you would like help getting all the settings right in Infinite Campus.
One item of note on the setup needed for this to work correctly.
There are several “State Reporting” boxes that will need to be checked in order for the extract to work correctly.
Checking these boxes does NOT mean that data will be reported to the state, it is just a requirement to create the extract file.
We will now do a short demonstration of where to find the Montana EWS extract in Infinite Campus and the steps needed to extract the
data. First log in to your district edition of Infinite Campus. Once you are in the Infinite Campus system find the index at the upper left
of your screen. If you aren’t already, go into the Index. Once the Index comes up, towards the bottom of the list is MT State Reporting, click on
that. It opens up another list. In this list, at the bottom is the MT EWS, click on that and the extract options come up in the main screen.
There are two options for the Format of your data extract, “CSV” and “HTML”. The file you use to upload into the GEMS system will have
to be the CSV option. The HTML option is available so you can see the data that is being extracted. The HTML version also has student
names, where the CSV version does not. This makes it easier for checking the data if you want to make sure the extract is pulling the correct
data for your students. So we select CSV here. The current semester is exactly as it says, select the semester, 1 or 2, that it
currently is at your school. We will select 1 here for the first semester. The last part is to select a calendar. The button should be on
active year, this data extract only works with current data. You can only select one calendar at a time to extract data from. If the students
you want to extract data from are in more than one calendar it is recommended you download each calendar separately and then combine the
data into one file. This allows you to only do one upload of data into GEMS that includes all your students.You are only allowed one upload a
day into the GEMS system, if you upload more than one, GEMS just overwrites the data from the first upload. Because of this, all your
students data needs to be in one file. Now we just click on the Generate Extract button. Save the file to your computer somewhere where you
can easily find it and make sure to give it a name you recognize. You have now saved the file, in the format required for uploading into the
EWS. Make sure to save this file in a secure location as it does contain student level data. Now open the file and confirm that it includes all
the data needed for the EWS. Each row is data for a separate student. The file shown here is fake data and is only for 10 students. If you
are collecting all the required data needed for the EWS in Infinite Campus there should be data in every column. It is OK to have a few
blanks as some data may not be available for certain students for various reasons. The last thing to confirm is that the sheet name in the
excel file is named “EWS” and nothing else. GEMS will not accept a file with any other name here. Once you have confirmed all of that,
the file is ready to be uploaded into GEMS.
That concludes this lesson on preparing your EWS data file
when using Infinite Campus District Edition as your student information system.
This slide shows the remaining lessons, including the next one in the series “Uploading your Data file into GEMS”.