June 6, 2008
Dear CALIFORNIA BASIC EDUCATIONAL DATA SYSTEM (CBEDS) Coordinators:
The CBEDS is an annual data collection administered on the first Wednesday in October by the Educational Demographics Office of the California Department of Education (CDE). Local educational agencies (LEAs), including county offices of education and school districts, submit data on staff, students, and schools to the CDE. Three separate forms are used to collect these data: the County/District Information Form (CDIF), which gathers data on staff and students; the School Information Form (SIF), which collects staff and student data specific to schools; and the Professional Assignment Information Form (PAIF), which collects data on certificated staff from LEAs.
This letter includes a summary of the changes to the October 2008 CBEDS data collection. We are making you aware of these modifications now, so that your LEA will be prepared to report these data by “Information Day,” October 1, 2008. On this day, each LEA is responsible for collecting all CBEDS data and submitting the data to the CDE by October 31, 2008. Also enclosed with this letter is your CBEDS Coordinator Information and CBEDS Distribution and Submission Survey that will allow you to update your CBEDS coordinator and/or submission information for2008.
We ask that each LEA designate a CBEDS coordinator. The CBEDS coordinator’s responsibilities include distributing materials to schools, holding training sessions, checking data prior to submission, and ensuring that data for every school in the LEA are returned to the CDE. The CBEDS coordinator will also be our point of contact for any questions about the data submitted by the LEA.
CBEDS coordinators should continue working closely with the LEA staff responsible for obtaining a Statewide Student Identifier (SSID) and submitting Annual SSID Maintenance data as enrollment, graduates and dropouts will continue to be collected through the Annual SSID Maintenance this year. If you have any questions regarding the Annual SSID Maintenance submission process, please contact the California School Information Services Office at 916-325-9260 or refer to their Web site at http://www.csis.k12.ca.us/library/statewide-identifier/default.asp (Outside Source).
Graduates and dropouts previously collected on the SIF form have been completely removed. As mentioned above, these data will continue to be collected through the Annual SSID Maintenance.
The following changes were made to the Estimated Number of Teacher Hires section:
All LEAs will receive the CBEDS PAIF Data Entry Assistant (DEA) software on a CD-ROM which requires Windows 95 or a later version of Windows. The software contains your LEA’s certificated staff data that were submitted last year and supports importing pre-formatted data electronically. You may print “working copies” that are designed for LEAs that do not have a centralized method of obtaining data for CBEDS. The “working copies” may be used to collect CBEDS data from school sites prior to key entry of data into the software. Once the PAIF data have been updated and all edit checks have been passed, you will use the software to send the data to a secure Internet site.
LEAs submitting fewer than 100 PAIFs have the option of using paper forms, but we ask that you consider using the CBEDS DEA software. If you are unable to use the software and wish to receive paper forms, check the box indicating your choice of paper PAIFs on the enclosed CBEDS Coordinator Information and CBEDS Distribution and Submission Survey. The CBEDS coordinator will be mailed CBEDS paper forms that are specifically designed for manual data collection. Each form must be completed and returned to the CDE.
This year’s SIF/CDIF data will be collected through the Online Public Update for Schools (OPUS), which is a CBEDS DEA Internet-based application that will include formatted data entry screens. Additional instruction on this new data submission process will be sent to you later this summer.
Please update the enclosed contact information and submission survey and send any changes to the CDE by Monday, June 23, 2008. It is important to verify or update this information so that the CBEDS materials are correctly distributed to your CBEDS coordinator by the first week of September. Your CBEDS password is printed on the enclosed survey and is used to access the contact information and submission survey update screens and the 2008 PAIF software.
If you have any changes to your coordinator information, we encourage you to use the Internet to update your information at http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/coordlogin.asp.
If you do not have Internet access, our office address is preprinted on the back of the survey, so you may complete the survey, fold and return the survey by mail, or you may fax it to 916-327-0195.
If you have any questions regarding this letter or the survey, please contact our office at 916-327-0219.
Sincerely,
Karl Scheff, Administrator
Educational Demographics Office
KS:md
Enclosure
cc: County and District Superintendents.