Timely Special Ed Evaluation (Indicator 11)

Timely Special Ed Evaluation: Special Education

The State is required to annually report on the percent of children who were evaluated within 60 days of receiving parental consent for initial evaluation as part of the State Performance Plan (SPP). This refers to children that an LEA has received a referral for evaluation to determine if the student is eligible for special education services.

Data Submission Details

DPI is requiring Timely Initial Evaluations (Indicator 11) data to be reported through WISE to better support our local educational agencies (LEAs) and will be captured annually in the December snapshot’s Year End data collection. This will save you time and effort by minimizing the number of applications accessed to report required data, allowing the Indicator 11 application to focus on LEAs responding to notifications of noncompliance.

Beginning immediately, with data from the 2023-24 school year and onward, all districts must ensure:

• All LEAs will report Indicator 11 data annually through WISE. In the past, only LEAs “in cycle” were required to submit data in any given year.
• All special education data related to Indicator 11 is submitted by LEAs to DPI via WISEdata Portal through their local SIS/special education vendors, AND
• All Indicator 11 data element fields contain valid data or the data will be flagged as in error.
• Districts that evaluated students without a WISEid, especially if these were children referred by the Birth to 3 programs, must go back and create WISEids for all children who were evaluated in 2023-2024, even if those children were determined not to be eligible for SPED.

The first instance of Indicator 11 data being collected as part of the 23-24 Year-End collection in a snapshot will be December 10, 2024, during the 2024-25 school year.

NOTE: In order to ensure that the data is valid and reliable, please note the following:

• The SEORA record cannot be submitted to WISEdata without a WISEid.
• If the student is referred, whether they get evaluated or not, whether they qualify for services or not, a WISEid is assigned. For greater details on WISEids as related to Indicator 11 evaluations, please visit the SEORA data element page.
• NOTE: Data cannot flow to DPI unless it is entered in your SIS. To resolve issues around data that is entered into the SIS that isn’t flowing to DPI, LEAs need to work with their vendor support staff to resolve data flow issues.
• For districts using a special education vendor: 
  • A student enrollment record (student School Association, or sSA) or a responsibility record (student Education Organization Responsibility Association, or SEORA) must be submitted via the primary SIS product.
  • Without one of these records, the special education vendor will be unable to send the data required for Indicator 11 (student Special Education Program Eligibility Associations, or sSEPA).
  • Once the SEORA record is in WISEdata Portal, Indicator 11 data elements are pushed to WISEdata Portal via your primary SIS or SpEd vendor SIS, as applicable.

Click the data elements below for more information about each Timely Special Ed Evaluation data element and what should be submitted to WISEdata.

Indicator 11 Data Elements 

USES: The Wisconsin State Performance Plan (SPP) represents the DPI’s plan for improving the outcomes of children with disabilities in Wisconsin. Indicator 11 is the ‘Timely Initial Evaluations’ application. Each LEA reports data for Indicator 11 once during a 5-year cycle. Milwaukee Public Schools is the exception to this, where, due to its size, ⅕ of schools participate every year. 

FAQs, Details, and Use Cases

1.  What schools have to report Indicator 11 data? A referral generally will be made to a child’s district of residence, then that school would report the data. A referral could be made for an child currently enrolled in a public school or for an unenrolled child (i.e., a child who is below compulsory school age, parentally placed in a private school, or receiving home-based education).
   1. NOTE for private schools: A private school would never be reporting the Indicator 11 data, as the private school does not complete the evaluation. When parents provide consent for evaluation and the student is enrolled in a private school, then the district where the private student resides submits the initial evaluation.
   2. NOTE for county CDEBs: County CDEBs do not perform initial evaluations. They provide services to the students once they have their IEP in place. As such, any WISEdata Portal validation messages received by County CDEBs for Indicator 11 related items can be either acknowledged (if it is a warning) and/or connected to the 'Unresolvable' tag (if it is an error).
2.  What is the timeline for the referral/evaluation process? A parent must give consent for their child to be evaluated for special education eligibility. This consent must be given by a signature on the required form provided to the parent by the LEA. The date upon which the LEA receives the signed consent to evaluate form is the day that starts the 60-day timeline, as per §115.78(3). 
   1. Ideally, the date upon which the parent signs the required form is the same day upon which the LEA receives that signed form. If this is the case, the 60-day timeline begins on that date.
   2. However, there could be a scenario where the date of the signed form is not the date on which the LEA receives the signed form; for example; the LEA holds a meeting on a Friday and provides the required form to the parent. The parent takes the required form home to read it over, and signs the required form later in the evening adding Friday's date to the form. The parent places the form in the student's backpack to return it to school the following Monday, but the student does not give the form to the teacher until Wednesday. In this scenario, the 60-day timeline begins on the date of that Wednesday because that is the date upon which the LEA received the consent to evaluate.
   3. LEAs are required by law to perform the evaluation within 60 days; these are 60 calendar days, not 60 school days. If that timeline falls across a holiday break or other time off of school, the LEA needs to plan accordingly within that time frame. Failure to perform the evaluation within the timeframe is an instance of noncompliance, which is important for monitoring and for the DPI Special Education team's annual reporting. For evaluations that occur outside the timeframe, there may be allowable exceptions.
3.  What dates will be entered into WISE? The Indicator 11 project will help record the date of parental consent and the date of the evaluation for special education eligibility in WISEdata Portal and WISEdash for Districts. It will also improve the collection, quality, and use of our data about how students are receiving timely evaluation for special education eligibility, which is their right in federal law.
4.  Which results from the evaluation process are reported? There will be children who are found eligible for special education services and accept to receive special education services, children who are found eligible for special education services and do not accept special education services, children who are found not eligible for special education services, and children for whom eligibility is not determined. All are reported in Indicator 11.

5.  Do students receiving an referral need to have a WISEid? Yes. The SEORA record cannot be submitted to WISEdata without a WISEid. If the student is referred, whether they get evaluated or not, whether they qualify for services or not, a WISEid is assigned. For greater details on WISEids as related to Indicator 11 evaluations, please visit the SEORA data element page. If the student is evaluated and qualifies for services, or if the student is enrolled, then a WISEid is assigned. For greater details on WISEids related to Indicator 11 evaluations, please visit the SEORA data element page.

     

6.  Does the student being referred/evaluated need to be connected to the LEA conducting the evaluation? As a prerequisite, a student's relationship to an LEA must exist in the form of students receiving services from that LEA and that may include general education or eligibility determination. LEAs evaluating students enrolled in their agency must have evidence that the student is enrolled (i.e., Local Person ID in SIS). LEAs that evaluate students who are not enrolled in their agency must indicate within their SIS an education organization responsibility association for evaluation purposes as well as if the student continues receiving special education services from the LEA.

7.  Can unenrolled students be evaluated? For unrolled students (students without an enrollment record [/studentSchoolAssociation or /sSA] ) who receive services from an LEA, a record from the agency responsible for the student (/studentEducationOrganizationResponsibilityAssociation) must exist before a special education program record (/studentSpecialEducationProgramEligibilityAssociation [SEORA]) can be submitted. Only SIS vendors can submit organizational responsibility records, whereas special education program records can be submitted to WISEdata from both the primary SIS and SPED vendors.

8. How do LEAs report Summer evaluations for students?  Initial evaluations should be reported for the school year (July 1-June 30) in which consent for the initial evaluation is received.

For more information refer to the Special Education Forms Guide, the Wisconsin State Performance Plan Indicators, and the IDEA Part B Flow-through Allocations Spreadsheet site.

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