Data Management

This notice serves as a reminder that the most accurate disability representation should be reported for all students with disabilities throughout the school year.

When reporting needs (disability categories) to AzEDS for students, all eligible needs listed on a student’s IEP should be reported for all special education placements in Arizona. If a student has only one need, that need is reported as the primary need. For students with multiple needs, only one can be reported as the primary need and the other need(s) would be reported as secondary. The primary need is defined as the one that most adversely affects the student’s ability to access the general curriculum.

The ESS ODC application will open on Wednesday, October 6, 2021. PEAs must login to the application to submit the October 1 verification and personnel counts. All technical assistance documents and FAQs will be available by accessing the “Help tab” on the home page of the ESS ODC application.

The ESS Data Management team is pleased to announce that a new report is now available in the AzEDS Portal, SPED50 – SPED Concurrency Report. This report will help PEAs find concurrent SPED data in AzEDS along with the concurrent PEA, Site, and dates reported to aid in determining the accurate reporting for the student. This report will only show Primary SPED LRE data reported by your PEA that overlaps with Primary SPED LRE data reported by another PEA (Concurrency).

A new series of LRE decision tree documents have been made available on the ESS Data Management website. These documents will provide a roadmap and assist in determining the correct LRE code for students with disabilities. Each LRE decision tree has been separated into 5 categories:

• Preschool No Early Childhood Program
• Preschool with Early Childhood Program
• Public School
• RTC
• Secure Care

Due to the passage of HB2863 during the Spring 2021 legislative session, the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind (ASDB) is now considered a local education agency (LEA) for the provision of free and appropriate public education (FAPE), for the submission of data and other required reports, and for the provision of courses of study that lead to graduation with a regular high school diploma for all students enrolled in their campus locations. This status change began July 1, 2021 (fiscal year 2022).

This memorandum addresses specific areas of responsibility that will impact both ASDB and public education agencies (PEAs) that place eligible students at ASDB through the IEP and voucher process.

Updated ASDB Student Reporting guidance from ESS Data Management is available here.

Special Education Directors,

Due to the passage of HB 2863 during the Spring 2021 legislative session, the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind (ASDB) is now considered a local education agency (LEA) for the provision of free and appropriate public education (FAPE), for the submission of data and other required reports, and for the provision of courses of study that lead to graduation with a regular high school diploma for all students enrolled in their campus locations. This status change began July 1, 2021 (fiscal year 2022).

This memorandum addresses specific areas of responsibility that will impact both ASDB and public education agencies (PEAs) that place eligible students at ASDB through the IEP and voucher process.

The Exceptional Student Services Data Management team will be hosting our next Special Education Data Updates live webinar on Wednesday, June 16th from 2pm – 3pm. This session will cover a variety of data topics that will include:

• Reminders
• Trending topics
• Topics requested by you
• Q&A

Registration is required to attend: Register for Special Education Data Updates webinar. 

A new integrity rule for FY 2021 will be introduced into the integrity process on SPED data shortly.  This new rule is a continuation of our effort to further validate SPED reporting to ensure clean data for the state.   

Integrity Rule -10134 

This rule will validate any students enrolled at an Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind (ASDB) to have a corresponding SPED Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) reported. 

AzEDS is considered the system of record for the 2020-2021 school year and will close for current year data submissions at 5:00 PM on July 15, 2021. Data for all public education agencies (PEAs) must be complete and accurate in AzEDS for FY 2021. Data found to be inaccurate after the statewide data recalculation is subject to a data correction process (this may also meet the criteria of A.R.S. § 15-915) and must be corrected with the assistance of ADE School Finance personnel. ESS Data Management encourages our customers to strive for complete and accurate AzEDS data entry. Please see below for some helpful tips when submitting your data.

We are pleased to announce the ESS Annual Data Collection (ADC) application is open and available to all public education agencies (PEAs). PEAs are expected to complete this data collection requirement electronically, utilizing ADEConnect to access the online application via the ESS Portal for FY 2021.