Tuesday, September 16, 2025
September 2025: Time for Sharp Pencils and Sharper Minds!
Announcements: Rostering for aimswebPlus Reading Readiness
In case you missed it, we sent out a special edition of WISE Insights on August 19, 2025 on the Act 20 Reading Readiness: Early Literacy Screener and aimswebPlus Rostering for 2025-26.
Spotlight on Strong Data: Close Out Year-End Data for 2024-25 School Year
DPI encourages the best practice of submitting and/or cleaning up 2024-25 data now that the 2025-26 SY has begun. Please view the WISEdata Annual Checklist webpage, especially the End of the School Year section, as a resource.
Term Completion Indicator is required in WISEdata and, in most cases, will be set to ‘Yes’ so long as the student completes all the required courses and school requirements.
- Even if a student leaves for a summer trip or graduates early (if the student has met all the requirements), mark that the student completed the school term.
- If a 12th-grade student transfers to another school mid-year, at a point where they are expected to continue classroom work to finish course credits in the new school, the completed term should be set to ‘No’.
Make sure to enter your students’ Exit Dates in your student information system (SIS).
- Exit Date is the last day a student receives services in your district. At the end of the year, this will be the last day of school.
Enter an Exit Type for all of your students into your SIS.
- TC is the DPI-recommended default exit type code for batch jobs to exit students who are expected to continue schooling next year.
- If your school has 12th graders graduating, exit the students using the High School Completion (HSC) exit type and send the appropriate credential type (diploma type).
- If your school holds eighth-grade graduation ceremonies, do NOT enter credential values, as the student has not received an official credential.
- If you need help determining the appropriate exit type, refer to the Exit Type Decision Guides on the Exit Type data elements page.
Make certain to end each Student Special Education Program Association (sSEPA) record in your special education system.
- While IEP (Individualized Education Program) dates can cross school years, sSEPA records must end within the school year, usually the last day of the student’s enrollment (i.e., exit all enrollments).
Data Quality Tip: Outreach Calls Begin!
DPI will take the December Student Snapshot on Tuesday, December 9, 2025, at 9:00 a.m.
Partner Support is here to help you with your data quality! If you receive a phone call, a PS staff member will review with your data items that will most positively impact your December snapshot. You can visit the Snapshot Preparation Guidance webpage for more details about the December snapshot collection.
App Feature: WISEid
It is essential that ALL students and public school staff have WISEids assigned. Users who need to upload files into WISEid and to work with those files once processed must start with the upload person data option under Manage Person Data. Uploading a Person record will create WISEids and/or update WISEid data during the process. NOTE: Choice schools do not report staff data and Choice school staff do not need WISEids.
The match review process allows you to see if the person already exists with another matching file, when a person file without a WISEid is uploaded. You may locate a matching person record that already exists in WISEid. If you find a match, you can combine the records for the person. Or, you might not find a matching person record. If there is no matching person record, you must create a new record to create a WISEid. Creating a new WISEid when one already exists ends up giving one person two WISEids, so please match carefully!
When records are incorrectly matched, one WISEid gets assigned to two different people. If you find that one person has two different WISEids associated, you should report the WISEids as duplicates. Only DPI staff have the WISEid role required to resolve duplicate WISEid records.
A change request occurs for the purpose of updating previously entered demographic information that now needs to be changed. Change requests often require communication between two or more schools or districts. Change requests can be denied. If you want to appeal a denied change request, there are specific steps to take.
WISEdash Featured Dashboard: GED/HSED Credentials
Every year, people take that step and earn their GED or HSED credential. In 2024, several thousand credentials were earned. Historically it has been hard to tie the credential earners back to the schools and districts to determine who they are, where they came from, and what they did in school. This also means it is just that much harder to develop data informed intervention strategies to help similar students get their regular diploma.
The GED/HSED Credential data may be somewhat unique for those unfamiliar with the GED. For example, of those individuals earning a credential in 2024, less than half were under 25 years old, and the oldest was born in 1931! When we look closer, less than half of the credential earners in 2024 matched a student in our WISEdata ecosystem. And in fact, because the paper GED/HSED records go back almost a century, only about 16% of the individuals in the data matched a student in WISEdata. For more info about the effort to digitize the paper GED/HSED records, check out the announcement about launching the credentials database.
The single most important question we are trying to answer with these dashboards is, “How many credentials were earned and who earned them?” You can drill further into this question by looking at different timeframes in which the credentials were earned (either the school year the credential was earned, by the estimated graduation cohort year, or by the last enrolled school year). The “who earned them” part of the question can be looked at further by demographics (which have been pulled from the WISEdata student information), including age at credential attainment and how they exited school. The goal of the dashboards is to provide information that districts can use to develop intervention strategies and to formulate the next series of questions to ask about this data.
There are three different dashboards in WISEdash for Districts located under Topics, Graduation, GED/HSED Credentials:
- GED/HSED Single Year dashboard
- Crosstab dashboard
- Trends dashboard
GED/HSED Single Year Dashboard
The GED/HSED Single Year Dashboard (snippet below) is like other dashboards in that you select your district or school and filter or group by the usual categories. However, you will only see a student’s data on this dashboard if the last enrolled school or district is your district.
You can filter the GED/HSED Dashboards by three distinct years: Last Enrolled School Year, Estimated Grad Cohort School Year, and Credential School Year. All three school years indicate July 1 through June 30. You can switch the year with the filter. For a more granular view of the Credential Attainment dates, use the GED/HSED Crosstab dashboard and add the Credential Year-Month to the table.
When the “Credential School Year” is selected, you can select years going back a bit farther than usual – potentially even as far back as 2000-01! You may see older years in the drop-down list. Some of these may be due to data entry errors and are included for completeness.
The GED/HSED Single Year dashboard lets you pick a single year (of any one of the three types of year). You must pick a district, but then you can filter or group by Disability, Disability Status, Economic Status, EL Status, Gender, Grade Level, Homeless Status, Migrant Status, Race/Ethnicity, and Student Cohort. There are six charts on this dashboard. They show number of credentials by:
- age at certification date,
- credential type,
- Challenge Academy Graduate,
- Job Corp Graduate, 118.15 Status, and
- last exit type.
As with most other dashboards, if you have permission to see individual student-level data, you can click on the chart elements to see a list of students.
GED/HSED Crosstab Dashboard
The second dashboard is the GED/HSED Crosstab. Like other crosstab dashboards, you can choose how to slice and dice your data and can view heat maps. Here, you can see the same data as in the single year dashboard, as well as Wisconsin Resident status as reported by the testing center, test center name, estimated grad cohort year, last enrolled school year, credential school year, and the credential year-month (to see monthly trends). You can click any underlined cells in the table to see the students, should you have those permissions.
GED/HSED Trends Dashboard
The final dashboard is the GED/HSED Trends Dashboard. Here, you can see a 10-year trend of the number of credentials earned by the year type selected, credential type, Challenge Academy Graduate, Job Corp Graduate, 118.15 Status, and last exit type.
Many of these records are the product of an effort to digitize historical handwritten GED records, and there are some caveats that come with these data.
- The data may have:
- manual data entry errors.
- errors deciphering handwritten historical student records.
- errors due to damaged and timeworn historical physical records.
- This data was provided by a testing center and was not validated against other data sources. Challenge Academy Graduate, Job Corp Graduate, 118.15 status, and Wisconsin Resident flags are reported by the testing centers. DPI does not verify these data.
- Last enrolled school year and last exit type are from the last year the student was tracked in WISEdata. No other data sources are used.
- Demographic information is as of the last enrolled school year.
- A few districts used incorrect exit codes, and there have been different systems for collecting and maintaining data throughout the years.
- Rules around high school credential requirements have changed over time. The most recent rules allow high schools to count students who earn high school equivalency diplomas as graduates.
- Individuals can earn more than one credential.
- These dashboards are updated weekly, over the weekend.
As a bonus, we have added extra info to the student profile! Under the Graduation topic, we have a GED/HSED dashboard:
This dashboard shows details for that student’s credential(s), including the overall credential(s):
And the individual test data:
Additionally, under the main Student Profile page, we have listed any GED/HSED credentials the student may have earned:
This is a new and interesting data set, and we hope it provides enough information to start making effective data informed intervention strategies.
Happy Dashboarding!
Upcoming Events
Back to School Training:
WISEid New User Training: (Webinar)
- Tuesday, September 16; 11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.
WISE Data Flow: In-Person Training
- Oshkosh: Thursday, September 18; 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
- West Salem: Monday, September 22; 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
- Whitewater: Monday, September 29; 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
WISE Enrollment: In-Person Training
- Oshkosh: Thursday, September 18; 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- West Salem: Monday, September 22; 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- Whitewater: Monday, September 29; 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
WISE Special Ed, Indicator 11: In-Person Training
- Pewaukee: Tuesday, September 30; 12:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
- Tomahawk: Thursday, October 16; 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
- Middleton: Monday, October 27; 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
WISE Snapshot Prep Regional Meetings
DPI Partner Support is coming to an area near you to better assist you in preparing for the upcoming student snapshot on December 9, 2025. DPI staff will be available at each regional site to present review guidance, talk through common issues and topics, and offer hands-on troubleshooting.
- Milwaukee Area (CESA 1): October 28; 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
- Eau Claire Area (CESA 10): November 17; 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
- Green Bay Area (CESA 7): November 19; 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
- Madison Area (Middleton Public Library): November 24; 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Recurring Training:
WEEKLY WISE User Group Call: EVERY Tuesday, September - December
- 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
WISEdata New User Training: First Wednesday of the Month
- Wednesday, October 1, 2025: 1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
WEEKLY WISEstaff User Group Call:
EVERY Tuesday, 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.October - March
October WISEstaff User Groups
- 14th – Introduction and preview of weekly scheduled topics, overview of collection timeline, staff checklist
- Expiring license and background check downloads to look for staff whose license expired after last year’s final audit
- 21st – Checklist Step One: Review previous year final audits, WISEid uploads, assignment code changes, updating contact info
- Review new assignment code descriptions
- 28th – Preliminary Certification opens, DQ dashboard, assignment counts, missing Entity IDs
- Reporting subcontracted staff
- How to report Alternative Ed
November WISEstaff User Groups
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4th – Assignment codes / license rules, DQ tools to verify assignments are entered
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Warnings: when to acknowledge, when to correct
- 53-0050 exceptions
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- 11th – Review of Prelim Certification tasks
- 18th – TBD
- 25th – Status of preliminary audits; start to review common audit errors
Upcoming WISEdata Events
3/10/26
3/10/26
Return to WISE Insights Landing page
Data Milestones
PI-1207 Opens: Monday, September 22, 2025
The PI-1207 Private School Report is a requirement of Wis. Stat. Sec. 115.30(3) and affirms that the school meets all of the criteria listed in Wis. Stat. Sec. 118.165(1) to be considered a private school. The form closes on October 15, 2025, for private schools, as per § 119.23(2)(ag)4. Please reference the PI-1207 User Guide webpage for help on how to complete the form accurately.
Adjust High/Low Grades in School Directory when PI-1207 Is Not Reflecting Correct Grades
When you are completing the PI-1207, if you see that your school’s grade levels served are incorrectly listed on the Enrollments screen, there are a few steps to take to fix this within the School Directory (SD) application. Find troubleshooting steps within the Enrollment section of the PI-1207 User Guide webpage.
WISEstaff: Collection Dates Posted for 2025-26
Updated WISEstaff Assignment Codes and the 2025-26 school year timeline for the annual staff audit and snapshot are now available on the WISEstaff Data Collection: Reporting Information page. Assignment Codes are located in the Technical Documentation section, and the calendar dates for this year’s audit schedule are listed in the Timeline. If you’re looking for some personal assistance with the annual staff audit process, please visit the WISE Events Calendar for training opportunities, like the WISEstaff Weekly User Group Calls that typically start in early October.