Guidance on Medical Emergencies

This document lists changes requested for the approved EDFacts Data Set for school years 2008-09 and SY 2009-10 to account for guidance on students with medical emergencies during the assessment testing window and to align the terms used to describe reasons why children with disabilities do not participate in NCLB assessments.

Background

The current EDFacts data set is approved for three school years: 2007-08, 2008-09, and 2009-10. The school year 2007-08 data is currently being collected. The collection of the school year 2008-09 will begin in January 2009.

The EDFacts data set is composed of data groups and categories. The structure of the EDFacts data set is explained in Attachment B-1. So that the data groups and categories can be identified as such, the names of data groups and categories are in italic in this document. Where appropriate, references are made to the relevant pages of Attachment B “EDFacts Data Set” from the approved collection package.

Students with Medical Emergencies

On March 29, 2004, the Department announced a policy that students who are unable to participate in the state assessment during the testing and make-up windows because of a significant medical emergency will not count against the school’s participation rate. A May 19, 2004, “Dear Colleague” letter provided additional guidance acknowledging that there may be circumstances beyond an LEA's control when a student cannot be assessed at any time during the testing window due to a significant medical emergency (e.g., a student is hospitalized due to an accident). In these cases, the school or LEA should not be penalized for that student's absence due to the documented significant medical emergency. Therefore, when determining the percentage of students taking an assessment, states do not have to include a student with a significant medical emergency in the participation rate calculation. States desiring to use this flexibility are responsible for determining what constitutes a significant medical emergency. This guidance is posted on the Department’s website at www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/stateletters.

Proposed Changes to the EDFacts Data Set

To account for the policy guidance regarding students with significant medical emergencies during the state’s testing window, the following data groups that collect data on the participation of students during the assessment need to be modified:

Students Tested in Mathematics – ID 588
Students Tested in Reading (Language Arts) – ID 589
Students Tested in Science – ID 590
Children with Disabilities (IDEA) Not Completing NCLB Assessments - ID 491

For the Students Tested files, the modification is to add a permitted value to the category “Participation Status.” Currently, there are two permitted values:

Participated in the NCLB assessment
Did not participate in the NCLB assessment

States are instructed to leave students with medical emergencies out of the file. After this change, there will be three permitted values:

Participated in the NCLB assessment
Did not participate in the NCLB assessment
Medical emergency

The third permitted value, medical emergency, would be used for the students with significant medical emergencies during the testing window. The change thus allows the state to account for all students. This change is to attachment B-5 page 99.

For the Children with Disabilities (IDEA) Not Completing NCLB Assessments, the modification is to add a permitted value to the category “Reasons for Not Completing Assessment.” The permitted value that would be added is “medical emergency.” In addition, the permitted values would be modified to align with the terms previously used in the legacy collection.

Current permitted values in EDFacts	Permitted values after this technical amendment
Absent during testing window and not made up later	Absent
Parental decision	Parental opt outs
Assessment not in accordance with NCLB (e.g. an out of grade assessment)	Students who participated in an out of level test (not in accordance with NCLB)
No valid score	Students whose assessment results were invalid
	Medical emergency
Other reason for not completing the assessment	Did not participate for other reason

For SY 2007-08, states are instructed to include students with medical emergencies under the permitted value other reason for not participating the assessment. This change is to attachment B-5 page 83.

Impact on the Legacy Collection CSPR (OMB 1810-0614)

There is no change to the Consolidated State Performance Report (CSPR) form. The instructions to the SEAs were to leave these students out of the data reported in the CSPR.

For school year 2008-09 and 2009-10, this question will be populated with data from EDFacts. Having the permitted value for medical emergency will allow states to account for all students in their EDFacts data submission while also allowing the correct numbers to populate this question on the CSPR.

Impact on the Legacy Collection IDEA Table 6 (OMB 1820-0659)

The Report of the Participation and Performance of Students with Disabilities on State Assessments (IDEA Table 6) has been changed by adding a column to section B (mathematics) and section E (reading/language arts) for students with medical emergencies. Previously, these students were reported under “other reasons for not completing the assessment.”

Burden

States are already collecting this data, so there would be no additional data collection burden.

This modification allows states to report the data on all students instead of having to remove those students before submitting the data. This modification also aligns the data submitted for IDEA and NCLB. Each SEA will have a one time adjustment of the process used by the SEA to build the EDFacts files.

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File Type	application/msword
File Title	(b)Known changes to EDFacts for SY 08-09
Author	barbara.timm
Last Modified By	#Administrator
File Modified	2009-02-03
File Created	2009-02-03