Data Entry Questions and Answers

March 14, 2003

Question: Which round do I record if a child is following a carry over? Can I call it Second Round?

Answer: Yes, call it second round.

Question: How do you record days that a child is absent due to Islamic holidays? These holidays are recognized as excused absences in Portland. When I am calculating program totals, do I include these in #days child absent or #days child unavailable?

Answer: Because your school has a policy to allow absences because of religious holidays, it's an official school absence and is coded as Child Absent. Child Unavailable is used when school functions prevent the child from attending.

Question: In the past, RR students who missed three weeks or more of service due to illness or any absence were considered to have "interrupted service". However, the "New Student Form Required" section of NDEC Data Collection Procedures for RR and DLL, 2002-2003 (p. 50) says: "It is not an interruption when there are long absences due to illness, vacation, inclement weather, strikes etc. These are coded the same as any other absences." What do you think?

Answer: A student's service is interrupted when we know in advance that a surgery, illness or maternity leave will extend for more than 3 weeks, and a second teacher will take over after 3 or more weeks have passed. However, service is not interrupted when an illness goes on for an undetermined time, even if longer than 3 weeks. This explains why some children's programs go on for longer than 20 weeks.

Question: How do I record data for an RS student who is then picked up for Reading Recovery? Do I fill out two records?

Answer: Yes. For a child who is both RS and RR, you will have one record for RS and one record for RR. The data entries will be identical except:

RR will have entry and exit data,

RS will have mid-year data and

the "Other Year-end" data are not filled the same for RR and RS.

This procedure might raise concerns about double-counting, but double-counting is not a problem, because: 1) the "Random Sample" group is not a "true" random sample, but is really a Comparison group and 2) this is the only ethical way to proceed because we can't refuse service to a child who needs it just because she happens to be in the random sample group. In this case, the key point is that NDEC's procedure creates a "high-achieving comparison group", not a "true" random sample, which we need to be clear about when presenting and interpreting the results.

Question: If the school did the fall testing before school started and this was Week 1, does the teacher count this in the # weeks in school up to the date of exit testing or do they only count the weeks that school was actually in session?

Answer: Week of Entry Testing, Week of Fall Testing, Week of Mid-Year Testing and Week of Exit Testing is the number of school calendar weeks of instruction, skipping vacation weeks, as shown in your school calendar. This is true even if the child was tested for entry before school started, which we have agreed to call "Week 1" because we can't have a "Week Zero". In contrast, the calculation of Total Weeks is different. It's the total number of weeks in the RR program, including RAK, regardless of whether or not school was in session.

Question: What do I do if one (or both) RS student leaves her school?

Answer: First, remember that we need to identify two RS children at each and every school where there is an RR teacher in the fall. If they haven't been entered already, data for these children should be entered now. This is very important.

Please note that RS children who move are not replaced. This is the case even if both RS children in any one school leave. When RS children move, their mid-year and year-end scores are left blank and will end up as "missing data". However, this is OK, because the attrition rate should be low enough that results will not be seriously affected, especially since the random sample is pooled across schools and will not seriously affect state-wide results.

Question: I collected data on more than 2 RS children in my school, and believe that this is helpful for administrators, who want a larger random sample to use as a comparison group at the school level. Should I enter data for only 2 RS children and delete the other records?

Answer: I think your point about the needs of administrators is a good one. If teacher leaders agree, we could collect extra random sample data to be reported on a local basis, as we've done before with Summer/Extended and Carry-over data. Then if students move at year-end, we could substitute those children for our 2 required RS students. We might want to discuss this issue as a group.

Question: I'm all paid up with NDEC, but they sent me a notice anyway.

Answer: Send NDEC an email to say you've already paid and copy it to Valerie.

Question: In the past, we asked teachers to fill out a None-of-the-above form if a student was withdrawn from RR before 20 weeks. These students became the Other category on our pie chart. Do we still use that form, or do that write a note in the NDEC comment box?

Answer: Last year, teachers wrote this information in the Comment box. Then after all the child's data was entered at the end of the year, the teacher printed out all the children's reports and sent them to the TL, who sent them to Daria/or this year Valerie. Alternatively, TL's can select all the children in the None-of the above category and print out their reports, if we don't want to keep a list and wait for teachers to send their reports.

Question: Daria left us a site message on the teacher leader menu. Is all of the information correct, or has some of it (e.g. the random sample part) changed?

Answer: I've deleted Daria's message, and will post another message to replace it. Just a reminder that teacher leaders can delete messages on their web sites by choosing Site Message in the Teacher Leader menu, then clicking on the blue "Delete" button. The trick is that you need to log out, then log back in again to verify the deletion.

Question: One of my RR teachers in Auburn is going on maternity leave at any moment. Do I need to change her status on the Teacher form on the website?

Answer: No, please note that there is no field for "Change in Teacher Load" on the Teacher form on the web. When I mentioned this to NDEC, Jeff told me that the procedures have changed, and that data on Change in Teacher Load are no longer collected. So in the Comments box, just write a note that the teacher has gone on maternity leave. Also, please send Valerie a note so she can update the university database of teachers and schools.

Question: If a teacher does RR at one school, and leaves her children at that school to move to another school where she works with different children, do I have to fill out a second Teacher record for her?

Answer: No. You don't want to have two records for the same teacher in the Teacher database. Remember that the Teacher database records information on teachers, so each teacher has one and only one record. As for the records of students served by different teachers, this is a little trickier. Please check to see how your situation falls into one of the categories on p. 25 of the NDEC's data procedures manual.