April 2025 WISE Insights

Spotlight on Strong Data: WISE Regional Workshops

It’s time to prepare for the May Demographics Snapshot coming up on May 13! A communication was sent out last week to all schools on April 7^th, detailing the data collected for this snapshot. Additionally, this spring the DPI Customer Services is coming to an area near you to better assist you in preparing for the May Demographics Snapshot, year-end tasks, and provide one-on-one support. Registration is now open!

• April 22 - Virtual Session, no need to register!
• April 25 – Eau Claire Area, CESA 10 (Chippewa Falls)

The April 22 virtual training will be recorded and uploaded to the visit the WISEtraining, Slides and Videos webpage. Meanwhile, feel free to review last year’s training!

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Spotlight on Strong Data: WISEstaff Final Certification, Addressing Errors via Data Errata

Much thanks to all the hard work completed by our LEAs to complete and certify their WISEstaff 2024-25 assignment and contract data. This annual staff licensing audit serves a very important purpose: to ensure that all professional staff members have a valid license for their assignment(s) as required by law.

School boards specifically are required under Wis Stats. §121.02 to ensure appropriately licensed professional staff and under Wis. Stats §118.21 to file licensure in a timely manner at the time a contract is offered and this data is made publicly available. The audit assists our local education agencies in meeting their obligations under law.

Additionally, the audit supports schools in meeting federal requirements. Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title I schools have licensing notification requirements. Under 20 U.S.C. §6312(e)(1)(B)(ii), which is the statute for parent notification, the district is required to give parents a timely notification if their student was assigned to a teacher for four or more consecutive weeks and that teacher is not meeting license requirements in the grade or area they are providing instruction. Further, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) special education staff must be appropriately licensed or it may impact to provide a free appropriate public education to students with disabilities.

100% of our LEAs initiated this required certification process. 84% of our LEAs completed the final certification with all system-generated errors corrected.

We appreciate and send a big thanks to the LEAs who completed the audit. We also know how difficult it can be to accomplish this certification task amongst all the other things that must be done during the school day. We don’t expect perfection and want you to know that there is still an option to document errors with incorrectly reported assignments or contracts: a data errata letter.

While you cannot change the data to “fix” the data submitted you can submit a data errata letter to show that you recognize the errors and provide DPI with the corrected data. Data errata letters are submitted via the WISEadmin Portal application. Visit the Data Errata webpage, WISEstaff section to access details and download a template. Visit the WISEadmin Portal User Guide to learn how to submit the data errata letter to DPI

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Data Quality Tip: Reviewing Economically Disadvantaged Status and Food Service Eligibility Data for the May Demographics Snapshot

The two data elements for Economically Disadvantaged Status are Economically Disadvantaged Status and Food Services Eligibility.

It is especially important that you submit the most up-to-date data for the two economically disadvantaged data elements.

All schools participating in the National School Lunch and/or School Breakfast Programs (SBP) must obtain the most up-to-date food services eligibility data for the 2024-25 school year in order to correctly issue Summer EBT benefits to eligible students. Please work with your school/district’s Determining Official, as listed in the School Nutrition Online Contract, to ensure that data is being reported accurately and completely.

See the following guidelines for reporting Food Services Eligibility:

NSLP Pricing Schools (not participating in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)

• Ensure that only students with access to at least one meal have their food services eligibility reported as free, reduced or paid.
• Students without access to meals while in attendance should be reported as having ‘unknown’ status.
• Continue conducting Direct Certification and processing Household Applications for Free and Reduced Priced Meals as outlined in the General Calendar of Program Requirements.
• Consult the DPI School Nutrition Team for assistance with determining free and reduced price meal eligibility by emailing DPIFNS@dpi.wi.gov.

Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) Schools

• Ensure that only students with access to at least one meal have their food services eligibility reported as free, since all students with access to meals while in attendance receive their meals at no cost.
• Students without access to meals while in attendance should be reported as having ‘unknown’ status.
• Continue distributing and processing the Alternate Household Income Form to determine Economically Disadvantaged Status.
• Conduct Direct Certification as required in the CEP Calendar of Program Requirements.
• Consult the DPI School Nutrition Team CEP Specialists for assistance at DPI.CEP@dpi.wi.gov.

Schools not participating in the NSLP/SBP

• All students should have their food services eligibility status reported as ‘unknown’ since schools not participating in the USDA school nutrition programs do not determine eligibility for NSLP/SBP.

Please take advantage of these resources for guidance on submitting Economic Status data:

• the WISEdata Understanding Economically Disadvantaged Status Data e-learning,
• the Snapshot Preparation, How-To Audit for: Economic Disadvantaged Status Data, and
• the Food Service collection data element pages, and
• the Student Food Services Program Association Record

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App Feature, WISEdash: May Demographics Snapshot Dashboard

Once again, it is snapshot time! It is a huge effort, and we appreciate all the work you do to maintain quality data, and we also know how tricky it can be when the data isn’t perfect. We recommend that LEAs take a proactive approach and start addressing issues well before snapshot day. And, fortunately, for public schools, there’s a tool for that!

The May Demographics Snapshot dashboard can be used to look at your data as it is in the “data warehouse” (i.e., WISEdash) so you can identify and troubleshoot issues or discrepancies. You can also drill down to the individual student level, so you know exactly what data is there.

The Snapshot Dashboards present multiple views of data, and it is easy to get confused.

• The green crosstab is the current data view (tip: current is close to the word currency, which is money, and money is green).
• The purple crosstab is the previous year’s snapshot view (tip: purple and previous both start with ‘p’. You can also associate “lavender” and “last year’s data,” both starting with an ‘l’).

What kind of data quality work can I do using the current year (green) crosstabs?

• Use the green current view prior to the snapshot to verify enrollment data by grade level (default view).
• View the data by accountable school to assure accuracy of school demographics that will be reported in the snapshot. Drag and drop dynamic crosstab data tiles to create reports and review each demographic category that will be included in the snapshot. NOTE: Filter tiles within each available crosstab can be used to customize data tables.
• Each underlined title or total can be clicked to see a detailed view of just those students.  From there, you can drill down into an individual student (if you have permissions to do so) or even create a custom student cohort!

Why should I look at the previous year’s (purple) snapshot data if I should be prepping for this year’s snapshot? Isn’t that a waste of time? 

Actually, comparing last year’s (lavender) snapshot data to your current year’s (green) data is really important and super useful. It enables vital year-to-year comparisons and allows you to see where differences may have occurred (for example, the number of students with disabilities are similar to last year, but your current 11^th graders with autism are only a tenth of last year’s 10^th graders with autism – the data may be true and accurate, but maybe not).

Providing that your student population hasn’t gone through any major upsets, the numbers on both graphs should be relatively similar. If your numbers are way different, that data is where you really want to take a closer look. Here’s a few commonly asked questions you can answer by using this comparison method are:

• Are your demographic data accurate?
• Are you missing data about demographics in your school or district?
• Are the demographics by “Accountable (Acctbl) School” correct?
• Are the demographics by “Attending (Att) school” correct?

Here’s some more data quality areas that are also beneficial to investigate and verify:

• Are all your EL students accounted for?
• Do you have any unknown counts in your student demographics?
• Compare “Students with Disabilities (SwD)” reported as special education students and verify if they should be included in the Special Education Assessment count. You can do this by clicking and dragging over both the “SPED Asmt” filter tile and the “SPED” filter tile to the columns position, and the “Grade” filter tile to the rows position.

• Similarly, you can click and drag the “Econ” filter tile to columns position and the “Grade” filter tile to the rows position to review your economically disadvantaged status student population.
• To check other data, drag and drop dynamic crosstab data tiles to create reports and review each data set of interest. NOTE: Filters within each available data tile can be used to customize data tables.  

For more information on using the snapshot dashboard, visit the WISEdash for Districts: Snapshot Dashboards - Spring Demographics webpage and the May Demographics Snapshot: What's Collected section of the Snapshot Preparation Guidance webpage.

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Upcoming Events

View the WISE Events Calendar

Recurring Training:

• Every other Tuesday: WISEstaff User Group Call, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. 
• Every other Tuesday, now through May: WISE User Group Call, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
• First Tuesday of the Month: WISEdata New User Training, 1:30 – 3:00 p.m.

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Data Milestones

Plan for May Demographics Snapshot

• The May Demographics Snapshot is May 13, 2025.
• Review the Snapshot Preparation Guidance webpage to get ready for that snapshot.

School Year Close-Out Tasks

• DPI recommends completing school year close-out tasks before collecting data for the new school year.
• Review the Annual Tasks Checklist webpage, School Year Close-Out section for greater details.

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