WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. Official Statement from State Education Department Communications Office. July 16, 2008: The State Education Department data transferral of student graduation rates statewide was inaccurate, resulting in the eight-week delay in posting individual School District Report Cards for 2006-2007, according to a statement released exclusively to WPCNR Wednesday from John Burman a spokesman for the Communications Office. Here is his statement:

"We have been improving our data system to be able to accurately track all students, individually, and that process is now almost entirely complete.  This year high school data has moved to a new system incorporating a unique ID for every student.  These data for more than a million students in over 1000 schools use a single data repository, and that has caused a number of issues. The system was not completely successful in uploading data.  Those problems are being corrected now, and we expect to be able to release the data by the end of the month

In the past, schools used the STEP system to report their data on high schools - attendance, Regents exams, enrollment, BEDS, VESID SEDCAR (special ed data) information, among others.  STEP was essentially an ACCESS database that resided at the local level with school districts. This year all that information has moved over to the NYSTART web-based systems. 

As you may recall, two years ago, K-8 information from districts including unique student IDs began to flow to us through the NYSTART system.  Now we are doing this, for the first time, at the high school level.

NYSTART is the same data system that processes and delivers the 3-8 exam data to districts (released on June 23).  The system also delivered AYP reports for schools and districts as well as individual student reports in both English and Math for districts to share with parents. This year the high school reporting has already included high school AYP designations which are based on the Accountability Cohort. 

We are verifying the Total Cohort numbers with the school districts and plan on a release at the end of the month.  As we near completion of the individual student tracking system, we're now able to include all students in our "total cohort" graduation rate, even students who dropped out in their first two years of high school. We've been transitioning to this new way of calculating graduation rates over the past two years. We believe that this "total cohort" graduation rate is a much more inclusive and accurate representation of a school/district's graduation rate. "