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Being able to review the data being sent to CALPADS all at once is a useful tool in looking for potential issues in reporting.
We just need to know how to query or find what we want in SIRAS.
- We can find data that is about to be sent.
- We can find data that has already been sent.
- We can find custom ranges of data. Ex. all transactions sent and/or about to be sent so far this academic year of 2024-2025
To summarize, knowing how to review lots of data at once with statistical reports/tables or matrix reports in SIRAS can quickly help you to identify data issues early on so they can be fixed and staff trained in better data entry procedures if need be.
This document is a living document that is designed for SELPA or LEA staff doing data monitoring of data about to be sent or that has already been sent.
Some details below may be later clipped out into separate articles but there will be easy hot links to click on to read the more detailed information as we continually are updating this Happy Fox documentation area for SIRAS.
Once we have found the records we want to review, the records are in a 'found set'.
It is this found set that we can use student list to view or view the data in table format.
Using sorting in lists allows us to zero in on specific student records.
Using table reporting allows you to sort data sets of an entire LEA or SELPA to find out of place data like wrong school type, plan type, or program setting.
Once you see the count of what may need to be fixed, you can go back to student lists, do the same sort and zero in on the record data you saw in the reports.
Using SIRAS this way is like exporting the data and pulling it into Excel to do the same thing.
Which of course any SIRAS user can do by using StudentData and ServiceData predefined extracts under /tools/data export.
Pending or 'about to be sent' can be obtained by clicking on the # of records about to be sent link in the /reporting/calpads reporting area of SIRAS.
After clicking on the number in the link, SIRAS will have now generated a found set of just those records. These are archived transactions ready to be sent from that page.
If you were to go to a student list, you could sort by key data points to identify data that could be better.
If you were to go to the table in the /reporting/statistical reports/setup custom report/ area of SIRAS, you also can sort to find data to improve but once the data is cleaner, you can do 5 layers of unique row table counts for those reports the superintendents want to see on a monthly basis.
Past data can be found by searching on a range of report event dates in the historical part of the SIRAS query builder.
To find the transactions for the 2023-2024 academic year we search between with report event dates between 7/1/2023 and 6/30/2024.
Conceptually, the SIRAS table view is similar to Excel.
A suggested protocol in SIRAS is to do monthly data extracts for offline reporting, but also do monthly Siras Table printouts of your key report metrics.
Those could be counts of eligibility, counts of initial IEPs w/outcomes so far in the year. It alsocould be students who will be 5 years old by 10/2/2024 and we want to make sure their program settings are correctly reported. Come to SIRAS office hours Tuesdays at 10a to ask questions and find out more info on how to run your reports.
Find only data from this academic year of 2024-2025 For this data we would search on report event date greater than 7/1/2024.
When you are doing these finds, keep in mind also the report status. Just searching on the dates above will find us the candidate record that may have been sent.
To add to the query report status = complete tells SIRAS it should only find records that have been repor
For the DIY:
What we do is build a table or list to compare data with up and down sorts of the columns involved.
We first review it in current data, if we find current data is wrong on a given record, we may need to look at all recent transactions for that record as well.
If you are reading this now, keep coming back to this page as it will be continually updated with more details in the coming days.
The Table allows us to find totals if existing bad data to know it needs to be addressed.
One can switch to lists and sorts to find the actual records needing to be fixed and those record can be marked to save for later, if the find all marked query is converted into a saved list. It could even be shared.
Useful Tables/Lists: (/reporting/statistical reports/setup custom report or /Reporting/Student Lists/Edit List)
- SIRAS Active Only monitoring: SSID, District/School, School Type, Active status, Inactive date, Inactive reason
- School monitoring: School, School Type, Age, Plan Type and Case Manager OR School, School Type, Primary Residence, Grade and Plan Type
- Preschool monitoring: School, Grade, Age, Program Setting, % in Gen. Ed.
Use SIRAS Active only for looking data anomalies.
Suggested Use, do this monitoring in a List.
Sort back and forth by inactive reason. There should be no inactive dates or reasons.
Is this a record that should be Inactive? Make record inactive, return to edit list, update list.
Sort back and forth by SSID. Any records found with no SSID should have active status set to pending. Fix the record, return to list, Edit list, update list and keep looking
(IF SELPA level) Sort by District Attending back and forth. There should be no records without a district, if you find one we fix the MIS page or contact [email protected] for further assistance.
Sort by School Attending back and forth. If there is a record with a blank school, this record should be pending. If the school attnding is known, fix the school attending, return to list, edit list, update list and keep looking.
Sort by School Type back and forth. If your data set is large you may want to switch to Table View to see any trends in school type being off.
Look for Private School and NPS School types.
You can also sort school type next to primary residence to look for outdated data resulting from transfers perhaps.
Look at primary residence next to school attending, school type and program setting
------ As of 9/4/24, more detailed instructions will be placed here ----
Use School monitoring for all active or active/pending
Click on School Type header to sort by school type, sort again to toggle between up/down
Review for wrong school types, transfers where school type wasn't updated.
A good query to use is active/pending students who will be 5 by Fall 1, this year its >10/2/2019
These are all the students who won't turn 5 by census so the older program settings and possible blank % in Gen. Ed. won't be an error.
This will be a lower found set of records to review.
The next query to use is the opposite, just change from greater than > to less than <= to find all students who are or will be 5 by 10/2/2019
This will be a larger found set, sort by age in a list this time.
When you get the youngest up top, notice that there may be a few 4 year olds, they are the ones who will have a birthdate between today and the census date and may not be coming up on your compliance concerns predefined queries.
Looking for all birthdates after 10/2/2019, these are students not 5 as of census date.
Run this query and use the Preschool monitoring table fields.
Sort back and forth by each column to see records needing fixing
