Updated state computer system frustrates districts
A major upgrade last month in the state’s primary student data collection system, CALPADS, has caused disruptions and data errors for many districts at one of their busiest times of the year. Statewide leaders representing districts told the state that some of the districts considered the system “unusable.”
The California Department of Education has acknowledged the frustration the rollout has created and says it is working to resolve the problems. But, voicing a common complaint, an administrator at one Southern California district said the severity of the glitches goes beyond time-consuming fixes and inconvenience. Rick Roberts, executive director of educational technology services at Grossmont Union High School District, said the problems are affecting the ability to administer the Smarter Balanced testing to some students and are undermining confidence that CALPADS will process information accurately in coming months.
“The end of the year (schedule) is at risk,” he said. “This sure looks like a year where data is suspect, at best.”
CALPADS, the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, has been the data workhorse since 2009. It houses much of the student information that the state collects, including attendance, courses taken, test results and accountability data that the federal government and the state require. But it has been laboring under the increasing data load, and the state has been planning a retrofit that it promises will substantially improve system performance and decrease how long it takes for uploaded data to be posted to the system.
It’s unclear why the department chose mid-April, during the Smarter Balanced testing, a peak period for using CALPADS, for the conversion. A spokesperson for the department initially said the U.S. Department of Education had been pressuring the state to get the work done, but the state department later clarified that was not the case.