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Frequently Asked Questions
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How does our district know if this is the right outcomes survey for our district?
- Who should the district include in the survey?
- Does the number of exiters in our district matter? That is, does it matter if our district has three exiters or 200 exiters when using the website?
- What if our district cannot locate or contact all exiters?
- What does the survey cost to administer, and are there any funds available to help districts pay for the survey costs?
- Why can the district collect this information without obtaining permission from the former students with disabilities?
- Who is qualified to conduct the survey interviews?
- Who is qualified to review the survey results and write the survey report?
- Does the survey have to be administered the way it is presented here, or can the district vary parts of it, e.g. send a written survey out or contact the former students in the fall rather than in the spring?
- Must we use the District Summary Report or the District Outcomes Report Template to write our district’s report?
- Who has access to the district’s data once it is entered into the website, and can the district remove the information if they want?
- How much of the survey results must be reported to the public?
- Will our district be required to report survey results to the DPI, school board or district if we collect the survey data?
- Where can our district view previous state reports?
- Can our district compare general education exiters with special education exiters?
- Are we able to compare the outcomes of different high schools within the district?
- Can we compare dropouts with successful exiters?
- Can we compare outcomes across multiple years?
- What training or technical assistance is available for using the website or conducting the survey?
- Will IDEA reauthorization have an affect on post high school outcomes data collection?
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:
- How
does our district know if this is the right outcomes survey for
our district?
This web site is available to assist districts in assessing
the independent living, post secondary education and employment
outcomes of their local exiters. The decision of whether this
particular survey process works within your district’s
goals is a local decision. Review the website, data entry requirements,
time commitment, and data output to determine if the website
meets your district's needs.
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Who should the district include in the survey?
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (WDPI) annually
provides the Federal Student Data Report (PI-2197) Local Education
Agency (LEA) exiter information for the website database. All
students who were reported as attending your district the year
before but exited prior to the current school year with a diploma,
certificate of attendance, aged-out or dropped-out are included
in this group, and are available for you to include in your
“population”, meaning those available to be contacted
for a telephone interview.
If you are using the website to fulfill SPP-Indicator #14,
you will attempt to contact all of your former students. If
you elect to use the website, you may choose which students
to actually include in the survey. This an in-district decision
that should be made prior to beginning the data collection process.
Factors to consider may include:
- the length of time the former student has attended in your
district
- the inclusion of resident students attending outside your
district
- consideration of including former students across several
years if there are fewer than five students exiting in any
one year
- “sampling” (interviewing a percentage of students)
rather than “surveying” (attempting to interview
all available exiters)
- the inclusion of non-disabled exiters
- the comparison of multiple high schools within the district
for larger districts
- the possibility that you will want to re-interview these
same students in the future (3-5 years post high school)
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- Does
the number of exiters in our district matter? That is, does it
matter if our district has three exiters or 200 exiters when using
the website?
Any number of exiters can be included in the survey, however
the way you use your data may vary. Also, if the number of exiters
is less than five, you must interpret your data carefully. For
example, with three exiters, your data will always read “0%,
33%, 67%, or 100%”, so small changes in survey responses
may mean big changes in the percentages calculated and reported.
Comparing results to the state study, high schools within
a district, or across in-district years, must be done cautiously
in cases of very small numbers. For example, statewide,
51% of youth with disabilities attend some type of postsecondary
education program. With just three students, your district may
be below the state average (33%), or above the state average
(67%), depending on the year. In this case, it may be better
to review the individual responses and view them as “trend
analysis”. This may mean reviewing, for example, why no
students continued their education, why fewer students socialize
regularly, etc. Your district report would likely be more narrative
than inclusive of data. Keep in mind also that data with
fewer than five students in any category (i.e. gender, ethnicity,
or disability) cannot be reported to the public as it is too
identifiable to the student. It can however, be discussed
on a district level, possibly with your special education staff,
transition providers, and administration. If you have a large
number of exiters, you may decide to choose to "survey"
all available exiters or do a “random sample” of
some of the exiters.
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- What
if our district cannot locate or contact all exiters?
The former students available to participate in the survey
are your “population”. It is not uncommon to be
unable to contact all exiters. Before beginning the survey,
the district should decide how many attempts will be made to
contact the former students. If the former student is unavailable
to participate in the interview themselves, information can
be obtained from the former student’s parent, guardian,
or other person who is knowledgeable about the former student’s
high school experiences and current participation in independent
living, post secondary education and employment activities.
The former students you contact by phone are your “District
Respondents”, and are the basis for the district’s
outcomes report.
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- What
does the survey cost to administer, and are there any funds available
to help districts pay for the survey costs?
In the past, the WDPI has made mini-grants available to local
educational agencies (LEAs) to defray the costs of data collection,
interpretation of survey results and report writing, and to
provide technical assistance regarding the survey collection
process. Watch for announcements of new mini-grant opportunities
from the WDPI Special Education Team.
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Why can the district collect this information without obtaining
permission from the former students with disabilities?
State and Federal Statutes require this data collection,
specifically 674(a) of IDEA and 115.77(4)(j)9 of Wisconsin Statutes.
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) protects
the privacy of students’ records. This law generally prevents
districts from giving out information about students without
their permission, except for certain reasons. This study is
one of those reasons. Because this study is required by law,
the student’s former school can use information from school
records without the permission of the former student, or parental
permission if the former student is younger than 18. All responses
must be kept private, and are not to be disclosed as individual
student data. See the DPI
letter from State Director of Special Education, Stephanie
Petska, in the survey instruments section on this website.
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Who is qualified to conduct the survey interviews?
If you are using this website to fulfill the SPP-Indicator
#14 requirements, St. Norbert College Survey Center will call
and interview your former students at no cost to your district.
Otherwise, the person or persons selected to conduct the telephone
interview is a local decision. Teachers who have completed outcomes
interviewing report they enjoyed contacting their former students.
They report their former students appreciated knowing someone
from their high school cared enough to call to ask their opinion
about how things are going for them. Other districts felt they
would get more accurate outcomes data if the caller were unknown
to the former students, and so hired someone to make the telephone
contacts. Regardless of who the districts select to conduct
the interviews, the district may wish to consider the following
qualifications for interviewers:
- confidentiality is the most important requirement.
The interviewer will collect and be knowledgeable about much
confidential information. This person cannot share this information
with community members, those not connected with the survey,
or others without a need to know.
- good communication skills and flexibility
is necessary to understand that former students may have a
variety of disabilities and methods of communication. The
interviewer must be able to adjust the language of the questions
and rate of responses to meet this need.
- availability to call during the day or in
the evening. If the interviewer cannot be available to place
calls at all times of the day and evening, the district should
consider having more than one trained interviewer.
Your district assumes the responsibility of training the interviewers
for this survey using the tools provided on this website. Interviewers
must become familiar with the survey
questions and script
before conducting the telephone interview. St. Norbert College
Survey Center can be contracted to call district exiters if
desired.
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Who is qualified to review the survey results and write the survey
report?
This is a local decision. In many districts, it will be the
director of special education or pupil services, and in others
it will be the superintendent, transition coordinator, guidance
counselor, principal or other interested party.
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Does the survey have to be administered the way it is presented
here, or can the district vary parts of it, e.g. send a written
survey out or contact the former students in the fall rather than
in the spring?
The procedures presented here facilitate the website process
and ensure local outcomes will be consistent with state outcomes
when administered consistently with the directions provided.
Districts have the flexibility to implement the survey process
in a different manner. If the district elects to change
the survey process, they must be aware of the implications for
then comparing local results with the state results. For
example, if you interview the students at a time other than
the spring when they have been out of high school nearly one
year and your responses may vary because of this timing. If
your district interviews too early, the former students may
not have had enough time to begin post high school endeavors.
You may chose to send out the survey questionnaire in the mail,
but you may get a lower response rate, or have questions misinterpreted
or returned incomplete. The decision is a local one.
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Must we use the District Summary
Report or the District
Outcomes Report Template to write our district’s report?
No. The District Summary Report
and District
Outcomes Report Template are provided to facilitate
the report writing process, but the district’s local report
can look any way that conveys the district’s data in a
meaningful way. The most important factor in writing your
district’s report is to know your data. The District
Outcomes Report Template contains the most information
you will likely need to use. In your district, things such as
differences in ethnicity or some categories of low incidence
disabilities may not be measurable due to low or no students
in these categories, so you wouldn’t include that information
in your report. The most important consideration is that
the report should be meaningful to your district.
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Who has access to the district’s data once it is entered
into the website, and can the district remove the information
if they want?
A user name and password is required for accessing data entry
and data viewing. No one other than the state project coordinators
will have access to the data, and even then LEA data will not
be used or shared without LEA consent. Other than during a required
survey year, LEA data can be removed if so requested.
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How much of the survey results must be reported to the public?
Other than during your required survey year (once within six
years as determined by the DPI), the decision to participate
in this survey process is a local one. Some districts are anxious
to collect this information to use the data to make local decisions,
and others are not interested at this time. Participation in
the website survey process is voluntary, and how much of the
survey results to share with the public is a local decision.
Only the auto-fill District Summary Report will be public information.
The federal government requires states to collect information
on students with disabilities who no longer attend high school
and who received special education while in high school. The
new federal reporting requirements under the State
Performance Plan (SPP) Indicator #14 will require data collection
and reporting on the percentage of students who are attending
postsecondary education, employed for pay, or both. In past
years, the Wisconsin DPI has made outcomes data a requirement
of the annual Special
Education Plan (SEP). Procedures for new requirements are
posted on the DPI’s website when available. (www2.dpi.state.wi.us/leareports/)
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Will our district be required to report survey results to the
DPI, school board or district if we collect the survey data?
No. Participating in the website survey process does not obligate
the district to share the results other than during your district’s
required survey (once within six years as determined by the
DPI). DPI will collect the required SPP data from the website.
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Where can our district view previous state reports?
Previous Wisconsin state outcomes survey reports can be located
at: http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/sped/posthigh.html
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- Can
our district compare general education exiters with special education
exiters?
At this time, the only data you will be able to review are
the outcomes for a single year (or single group consisting of
multiple-year exiters) of special education exiters. The website
is under construction to add this feature. It is anticipated
that this capability will become available as the project advances.
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Are we able to compare the outcomes of different high schools
within the district?
At this time, you can compare outcomes for special education
exiters attending different high schools within your district
by entering the data as if it were two different districts,
separating the former students by your district’s school
codes. You will then have two reports which can be viewed individually
and compared in areas of interest. The website is under construction
to make it easier to compare the outcomes of general education
and special education exiters. It is anticipated that this capability
will become available as the project advances.
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Can we compare dropouts with successful exiters?
At this time, the only data you will be able to review are
the outcomes of successful special education exiters. The website
is under construction to add this feature. It is anticipated
that this capability will become available as the project advances.
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Can we compare outcomes across multiple years?
At this time, the only data you will be able to review are
the outcomes of successful special education exiters for a single
year unless you enter the data of multiple year exiters as if
they were a separate district. You will then have two reports
which can be viewed individually and compared in areas of interest.
The website is under construction to make it easier to compare
the outcomes across years. It is anticipated that this capability
will become available as the project advances.
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What training or technical assistance is available for using the
website or conducting the survey?
The website was developed with independence of use as a feature
by using the Survey Directions, FAQs, and other features. The
web site provides access to a technical support person via e-mail
in the comments section.
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Will IDEA reauthorization have an affect on post high school outcomes
data collection?
Data is collected by states as mandated through state and federal
statutes. The new
State Performance Plan (SPP) requires states and districts
to annually collect outcomes data. (Indicator #14) In Wisconsin,
each LEA will be required to collect and report local outcomes
data once over the next six years. Milwaukee will be included
and sample their high schools annually.
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