What is the Data Health Check report and why is it important?
Research and Data (RD) pulls a weekly Data Health Check report from Infinite Campus and sends it to the school sites (secretaries and principals) so they can review and correct data.
As a district, we are continually working to clean up data in our student information system. Data cleanup, data accuracy, and data integrity are critically important to so much of the work that we all do in NUSD. It is a very large project requiring the participation of site staff as well as Ed Center staff. This is of great importance all throughout the year as we submit this data to CALPADS for state reporting which becomes part of public record. Accurate relationship and address information also directly impact the operation of the IC Messenger system, our ability to mail important documents to families (such as test score reports, report cards, and attendance letters), and ensures that students receive appropriate services such as transportation.
Here are a few examples of the impact on multiple departments when students fall into some of the data clean-up categories found in the Data Health Check reports:
- Active students who have no guardian
- This prevents daily Attendance calls from going out to the students’ contacts, which is a safety concern
- Also prevents any other Messenger calls/emails from going out to the students’ contacts
- Also prevents Parent Portal accounts from being created for parents/guardians of newly enrolled students
- Active students not in a household / Active students who do not have a mailing address
- Attendance/Truancy letters will not generate as they are dependent upon mailing address fields
- Any other letters in IC (Request for Records, etc.) will not generate for the same reason–this also includes Report Cards
- Any Ad Hoc filters which include address fields will exclude students without addresses and may prevent them from receiving important services such as Transportation and Food Services and impact their ability to participate in state assessments
- People in more than one household
- Students with “Primary” membership in more than one household will potentially not have their enrollments rolled forward correctly to the next year. Students who live with more than one guardian at different addresses can and should be members of more than one household. However, they should have “Primary” membership in ONLY ONE household with “Secondary” membership in any other households.
- (Charters excluded from rolls based on boundary)
How should items on the Data Health Check report be resolved?
Below are the sections you may find on your site report along with instructions for corrections. Many of these issues may also require contacting families for accurate information/clarification. The categories in red should kept at zero. The other categories are just flagged for further investigation and clarification—for example, “People in more than one household”. It is expected that you most likely will (and should) have students in more than one household in the case of split families.
- Students who have the same state ID / Students who have the exact same name and birthdate (this category should be at zero)
- Review the records for both students to determine if they are the same person
- If the students are definitely the same person, submit a work order to merge the records
- Students who have no birth date / Students who do not have M or F in the gender field (this category should be at zero)
- Check student’s registration packet or CUM and enter DOB or gender on the student’s Demographics tab
- Can also be checked against CALPADS
- Active students who have no guardian (this category should be at zero)
- Check student’s registration packet or CUM for guardian info
- If the guardian is part of the student’s household, check the appropriate boxes on the student’s Relationships tab
- If the guardian is not in the household, search for the guardian in IC
- If person record exists, add to the student’s household (if appropriate), add the relationship, and check the appropriate boxes
- If person record doesn’t exist, create person and follow steps above
- Active students not in a household (this category should be at zero)
- Check student’s registration packet or CUM for address and guardian info
- Use the Census Wizard to create a household for the student with their address and their relationships
- Active students in households by themselves (this category should be at zero)
- Check student’s registration packet or CUM for guardian/relationship info
- Use the Census Wizard to add guardians and other family members to the student’s household
- Active students who do not have a mailing address (this category should be at zero)
- Verify the student’s address via the registration packet or CUM or by contacting the guardian for confirmation (if no proof of address is on file, guardian will need to provide this)
- Add the address to the student’s household and mark for Mailing
- People who have unusual characters in their name (this category should be at zero)
- Use the All People search to find name
- Remove any periods, commas, parentheses, numbers, etc. (hyphens and apostrophes are acceptable)
- Each person must have their own person record—two or more people should NOT be combined on one single person record
- Households with more than 8 members
- Review the household members and end household membership for anyone not belonging to the household
- Households with more than 1 primary mailing address / Households with more than 2 addresses (this category should be at zero)
- Verify the student’s address via the registration packet or CUM or by contacting the guardian for confirmation
- Use the Household search to find the household and select the Addresses tab
- Select an address and:
- End-date any invalid addresses
- Check the secondary box if an address is secondary (an address is secondary if a single household has a separate mailing address—this is NOT the same as secondary household membership (when a student lives primarily in one household and has secondary membership in a different household at a different address). See the NUSD Knowledge Base articles on Adding a Secondary Address to a Household and Making a Person’s Membership in a Household Secondary for more information.
- Households with more than 2 guardians
- Check student’s registration packet or CUM for guardian info
- On the student’s relationship tab, ensure that only the guardians have the Guardian box checked
- Uncheck the Guardian/Mailing/Portal/Messenger boxes for any family members or emergency contacts who are not guardians of the student and don’t have permission for mail, Portal, and/or messages
- People in more than one household
- Review the household membership of the person
- End-date their membership in any household where they do not belong
- For duplicated households, see “Duplicate Households” section below
- Discrepancy between age and grade level
- Review the student’s birth date and grade level
- If the DOB is incorrect, use the IDENTITIES tab to update (do not overwrite data on the Demographics page)
- If the grade level is incorrect, submit a work order for further assistance
- If this is a promoted or retained student whose grade level and DOB are correct, no action is needed
- Students enrolled with no schedule (this category should be at zero)
- Make sure student gets scheduled into classes if student is enrolled
- End enrollment as appropriate if student is no longer enrolled
- Sections with no teacher OR sections with no students
- If you are not the scheduler at your site, work with the scheduler to add a teacher and/or students to the sections
- If the sections are not being used and have no student data attached for the school year, the scheduler can enter a work order to delete the section
As you work through the sections on the report or as you do your daily work, you will come across duplicated people as well as duplicated households. Below are some guidelines to get these records cleared up:
- Duplicate People (students, guardians, or staff)
- Compare email, cell phone, relationships, and household info to determine if people are the same. There are numerous people in IC with the same, common names who are not the same people and should not be merged. Please do NOT request a merging of records unless you have confirmed that the possible duplicates are in fact the same people.
- Submit work order to have person records merged.
- Include name(s), person IDs, and note which person record will be retained—this should be the record with the most up-to-date, correct contact information.
- Ex: “Merge John Smith 12345, Jonathan Smith 98765, and Jonathan Smith ***45678” or “Merge John/Jonathan Smith 12345, 98765, and 45678(keep)”.
- When information on the records is not identical, the contact info on the retained record will overwrite the other. The record with the correct contact info should be retained as all relationships and households will be kept in the merging process.
- Duplicate Households
- If you have a family in multiple households at the same address that need to be merged, select the household you wish to keep and add any missing members to it.
- End-date JUST THE STUDENTS from the other households to ensure their records are accurate. Do NOT end-date the address or any other members. End-dating all information (address and all members) prevents the household from being searchable anymore.
- Submit a work order to have the other households deleted once you have completely finished building out the household to be kept.
- For households to be deleted, include the household name, household ID, name of someone in the household, and the address.
- Households cannot be pulled up with the household ID alone. You will be asked for further household information needed to cross-reference to ensure the correct household is being deleted as it cannot be restored once deleted.
- As households are designed to span multiple schools, searching a household always searches district-wide so the more information provided, the easier it will be to locate the correct household. Not providing adequate household information will slow down the completion of your work orders.
NOTE: Please closely monitor your work orders and the email responses from the Track-It Work Order system. Questions, requests for further info to complete the work order, and notes are often included in these emails.