June 6, 2022
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Benchmark Assessment Reporting for EOY Board Meetings
Section 98b Queries Available for End of Year -
Part of the Benchmark Assessment reporting language in the 2021-22 School Aid Act is the requirement for districts to report to their board on the progress toward meeting established educational goals. Section 98b (b) further indicates that the report must include assessment data disaggregated by grade, student demographics, and mode of instruction (see page 84 of the School Aid Act link). If your district used one of the MDE-identified assessments (Curriculum Associates i-Ready, DRC Early Literacy, and Mathematics Benchmark Assessment, DRC Smarter Balanced Interim Assessment, NWEA MAP, and Renaissance Star) and your district has provided data via MiDataHub, data will be aggregated by the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative for use in creating a report to the Governor and legislature based on statewide data. Part of that work is to create district-level aggregate files, however, the timeline for that work will lead to the files being created after the EOY timeframe by which districts must report to their boards.

Similar to the February board meeting the team at MiDataHub explored ways to ensure districts are able to provide similar information to their school boards for EOY reporting. By leveraging the Custom Export tools in the MiDataHub cockpit, we were able to complete four queries all of which are based around the Sec. 98 Goal Progress Report Template (this template has been previously shared through GELN and MAISA and is the same template used for the February board meeting as well). The progress report template has 4 tables, including tables B, C, and D where aggregate data is needed. The MiDataHub team has created 4 queries in the Custom Export Tool that represent tables B, C, and D, as well as a Section 98 research file for each of the assessments listed below:
  • Curriculum Associates i-Ready
  • NWEA MAP
  • Renaissance Star

The instructions for running the reports can be found on our website under Documentation > Cockpit Information > Prebuilt Reports. A direct link to each of those reports is below:



The name and details of each available report are below:
 “Assessment Name” Section 98 Research File - EOY 2022
This file provides student-level detail results with Mode of Instruction for further analysis.

Please note the Mode of Instruction column now indicates the value from the MiDataHub ODS. There is a new status available in the file labeled “Assumed In-Person” This is used only for students who didn’t otherwise have the Mode of Instruction provided to MiDataHub.

 “Assessment Name” Section 98 Table B – EOY 2022
Produce files for the End of Year Board Report on Achievement or Growth on Benchmark Assessment from April 1 through the end of the year- By Student Demographics 

“Assessment Name” Section 98 Table C – EOY 2022
Produce files for End of Year Board Report on Achievement or Growth on Benchmark Assessment from April 1 through the end of the year - By Grade Level

“Assessment Name” Section 98 Table D – EOY 2022
Produces a breakdown of results by Mode of Instruction for the EOY Assessment
This report assumes all students are fully in-person unless otherwise noted.

Table D file will provide the Mode of Instruction as published from your Student Information System to the MiDataHub ODS. This field will assume all students are fully in-person unless otherwise noted from the way data has been published from your Student Information System.  

The three types of Mode of Instruction provided to us from MDE for reporting on are:
  • FULLY IN-PERSON: Students in this subgroup primarily received instruction in a fully in-person/face-to-face format.
  • HYBRID: Students in this subgroup primarily received instruction in a hybrid format where a portion of their instruction was provided in-person and a portion was provided remotely (e.g., half-day in-person and half-day remote, alternating one day in-person then one day remote, etc.).
  • FULLY REMOTE: Students in this subgroup primarily received instruction in a fully remote or virtual format.

Please understand these results are predicated on criteria for determining when a student is Significantly Behind Grade Level, which was posted by MDE in their Fall Benchmark Aggregation Rules and Template document. During the process of creating these aggregation queries, we identified the score range changed for the DRC Early Literacy and Mathematics Benchmark Assessment (also called the MDE K-2 Benchmark Assessments) had changed. That score range indicates scores in the 400s when values for the assessment this school year range from the 800s to 1000s. Given that issue and other issues encountered in working on the DRC assessments, we are unable to provide aggregation routines for the DRC assessments at this time.

Another challenge experienced in working on these reports was some of the MDE identified assessments were delivered multiple times within the Fall and EOY timeframe. This was seen in very few instances in NWEA and i-Ready but was significant in both the Star and DRC assessments. For the Star export, we worked to ensure that only the most recent score was used, but that modification to the query added significant processing time. Due to that, it is possible that some of the queries will time out, around the 60-second mark. This will cause the export to fail and not be available for download. This could occur mostly in larger districts and with the NWEA and/or i-Ready queries. In the event you have attempted to download the query and receive a timeout error, please reach out to our support team at [email protected] and we can assist you with generating these queries as outbound integrations. When submitting a ticket with the timeout issue please alert us to the timeline needed for your board meeting, to ensure we can prioritize the request in the order needed to provide you with the data prior to the board meeting.  

The four queries provided to you from the MiDataHub team have been constructed as-is in hopes that they will serve as a starting point for districts to present the data, meeting the EOY board meeting requirement posted in the 2021-22 School Aid Act. Please understand the data provided in these reports is only as good as the data quality of student data loaded to the data hub from your Student Information System, and the ability for assessment data to be matched properly to students. 

If you have any questions on how specific students were categorized, the Section 98 Research file - EOY 2022 report for each assessment indicates the status we have of each student. If a student isn’t listed on that query, that would indicate MiDataHub had no assessment data for the student.

The MiDataHub team hopes these queries are helpful and save time for your district for the EOY board meeting requirement. 
Benchmark Assessment End of Year Reminder
As you are aware, we are approaching the end of the school year, and with it, the requirement to provide aggregated assessment data to MDE with Mode of Instruction. This information is effectively due as of the last day of the school year. For districts who are using one of the MDE-Identified Assessments (NWEA MAP, Curriculum Associates i-Ready, Renaissance Star, DRC Smarter Balanced Interim Assessment, DRC Early Literacy, and Mathematics Benchmark Assessment), an aggregate data file needs to be provided to MDE in one of two ways:
  1. Send all assessments and mode of instruction to MiDataHub and provide permission for MiDataHub to work with EPIC and MEDC to do the aggregation
  2. Use the MDE-provided template to manually create a file and upload it to the District Folder in the data hub cockpit application

Since the first option above is the easiest for districts, and almost all districts have completed that process for the Fall data, we will focus on that method for the remainder of this article.

For districts that had their benchmark assessment data flowing in for the Fall, it is expected the data will continue to flow in for the End of Year without additional effort. Similarly, the permission granted to aggregate the data remains in place unless specifically inactivated, so nothing further should be needed there.

Probably the biggest item for the EOY reporting period is the need to provide Mode of Instruction (MOI) data. That topic has been covered in previous newsletters and a webinar that was held on April 19th. MOI data can be provided in three ways:
  1. Through your SIS system, with confirmation reports/queries available in MiDataHub
  2. Through a data hub export/import process, which was largely the focus of the April webinar
  3. Through a maintenance script that has been added to the Utilities menu in the cockpit application.

The last option mentioned, the maintenance script, is a mass update utility that can be accessed in Utilities>Maintenance Scripts. The screen that pops up is shown below:
The effect of running this operation is to simply mark all students who have one of the MDE-identified assessments, but who don’t have a Mode of Instruction, as FULLY IN-PERSON. While that is the assumption that the researchers will take when aggregating your data, we would appreciate districts running this operation to avoid any ambiguity. Note: This process should only be run once any Hybrid and Fully Remote students have been assigned an MOI.  

Finally, we have revised the Features>Return to Learn error check screen to provide additional information to help you ensure your data is ready for aggregation. See the Return to Learn Dashboard article below for a walkthrough of what to look for when using that screen to validate your data.
Return to Learn Dashboard
As mentioned above, the 04.18 release provided improved functionality for the Features>Return to Learn dashboard, which provides a status of district data readiness for the Benchmark Assessment reporting process. When on your Manage District page, simply click on the Features menu and then choose Return to Learn to see the dashboard. 

In the example screenshot below, here are the items that you should look at for the end of the year:

Required: Data Readiness Status - This district has 616 students missing UICs. That is typically an issue with the data flowing from the SIS

Optional: Students with NWEA Assessments - These now show as a blue informational item when data isn’t present. If your district doesn’t use a particular assessment and/or doesn’t plan to report it for the benchmark assessment mandate, then this is not an issue.

Optional: Students with Renaissance Star Assessments - Note that this district has a nice breakdown of assessments by grade level. Also notice that there are sections for both Beginning of Year and End of Year, with the total number of assessments being about the same for both. That is the ideal state. Ignore the red x and the percentage as they are meaningless. If your assessment numbers for beginning and end of the year are dramatically different, then please contact [email protected] so we can help troubleshoot.

Optional: Mode of Instruction - This new section should show a breakdown of the 3 Mode of Instruction (MOI) statuses Hybrid, In Person, and Remote. Depending on your SIS, they may also say Fully Remote or Fully In-Person. Any students who are not assigned an MOI in the system will be assumed Fully In-Person for data analysis purposes.   
v04.18 Release Details
MiDataHub Update v04.18 Release Details -
Over the Memorial Day weekend, MiDataHub was updated to version 04.18. The primary benefit of that update was for MSDS reporting functionality. Updates included in this release are:

Extractor updates for the following MSDS collections:
  • EOY General Collection
  • EOP Early Childhood Collection
  • SRM
  • TSDL
  • Migrant TSDL
  • Third Grade Retention
 
Error Check Updates for the following MSDS collections:
  • EOY General Collection
  • EOP Early Childhood Collection
 
Error corrections to General Collection and Early Childhood Collection processes
 
Additional functionality updates:
  • OneRoster metadata mapping – addition of path tool: This tool makes it easier for districts to provide metadata (fields not available in the standard OneRoster integration) for OneRoster connected systems 
  • SRM screen functionality - Enhanced functionality for the Student Record Maintenance screen
  • RTL Feature status updates - Provides a better breakdown of Fall vs. EOY data for the 4 MDE-Identified Assessments, as well as a Mode of Instruction status (see Return to Learn Dashboard article below for more details)
  • Minor bug fixes
Participation Update
Participation Count by System