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Act 20 and WISE

Overview

Wis. Stats §118.016 of 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 requires early literacy screening of Wisconsin students in four-year-old kindergarten (K4) through grade 3. Visit DPI’s Early Literacy Assessment and Act 20 page for more information and for answers to frequently asked questions about this.

aimswebPlus

Pearson’s aimswebPlus assessment system provides the early literacy screening in K4 through grade 3 throughout Wisconsin. Visit Pearson’s aimswebPlus: Wisconsin Act 20 page for:

  • more information on the early literacy screening process and content
  • Pearson's Act 20 Rostering Guide for the current school year
  • Pearson-led trainings

This webpage explains how your student information system (SIS) data flow to both Pearson aimswebPlus and to DPI via WISEdata Portal, and what role you play in this process.

Click the links below to navigate to different sections of this page:

Understand Data Flow

data flow from SIS to WISEdata to aimswebPlus

  1. Keep your SIS data up to date. When you regularly update your SIS, then aimswebPlus has the most up-to-date information needed so that your school can administer the early literacy screening to your students.
  2. DPI recommends that your SIS push data to DPI through the Ed-Fi API each evening. This nightly schedule is the option set up by default at the beginning of the year. This syncs your SIS data to WISEdata Portal.
  3. AimswebPlus pulls from the Ed-Fi API each evening:
    • a list of students eligible for assessment under Act 20 based on DPI's enrollment records for each public school's K4- grade 3. On the Assessment Roster screen in WISEdata, this is the count for "studentAssessmentRegistration for Pearson aimswebPlus."
    • the information your SIS sent to WISEdata.
  4. Student, class, and teacher ‘Roster’ data are available in aimswebPlus the next morning.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

  • It is necessary to have the Roster data (staff, students, and courses) in aimswebPlus before schools can administer the screening assessment.
  • Ask your SIS vendor when information that you enter in your SIS is sent to WISEdata. If your SIS syncs your data later in the evening, after aimswebPlus has already pulled the available data to create the student, class, and teacher data for assessments, your data does not display in aimswebPlus the next morning. Rather, it will display in aimswebPlus two days later. If this is the case for your school/district, you may need to ask your SIS vendor representative to sync the data earlier in the day. This way, aimswebPlus can pull the data that same evening.
  • For more information about the Ed-Fi API, visit the What is an API? section of the Ed-Fi Credential page.

Using a third-party tool?

If you're using a third-party tool such as Clever or ClassLink to load course and staff data, contact Pearson to set up that connection. To contact Pearson, email aimswebsupport@pearson.com or call +1 (866) 313-6194 and select option two from the phone menu.

Enable Data Flow

Ensure your SIS is actively communicating with the Ed-Fi API for the current school year. Your SIS data will not flow to DPI/WISEdata Portal until you activate your annual subscriptions through the Ed-Fi Credential application.

  1. Work with your SIS vendor and district technology coordinator to enter the Ed-Fi URL, key, and secret in your SIS.
    • If you need help updating your vendor subscriptions at the start of each year, follow the steps in the Current Year Subscriptions: Resubscribe section of the Ed-Fi Credential User Guide.
    • If you need help sharing the Ed-Fi URL, key, and secret, follow the steps in Share Credentials With Vendors section of the Ed-Fi Credential User Guide. For the 2025-26 school year and onward, there are new Ed-Fi URLs for every school year.
    • You may need to complete additional annual configuration in your SIS to send data to WISEdata.
  2. Click the WISEhome link on the WISEhome and WISEsecure Login Information page.
  3. Open the WISEdata Portal.
  4. Ensure that students and student demographics entered in your SIS have synced to WISEdata.
    • If you do not see the data you expect, follow the initial troubleshooting steps in What is WISEdata Portal? on the WISEdata Portal Tutorials page.
  5. If you use WISEdata for staff and classes, also ensure that roster data is synced with WISEdata and flowing for the current school year.
  6. Ensure that students appear in aimswebPlus.

Troubleshoot Data Flow Issues in the WISEdata Portal's Assessment Roster Screen

Overview of the Assessment Roster Screen

If your data is not populating in aimswebPlus, use the Assessment Roster screen in WISE data to troubleshoot. This screen in WISEdata Portal gives an overview of which data are successfully flowing from your SIS and from DPI to the Ed-Fi API for a given school and school year. The Assessment Roster screen includes the total count of data flowing from your SIS, from DPI, and from Pearson:

  • student data (counts for enrollment, demographics, assessment registration eligibility from DPI, assessment results from Pearson)
  • staff data (counts for staff who need access to the assessment platform, contact information for staff who can give the assessment in each school)
  • school Roster data (counts for sections and courses, students and staff assigned to sections)

The total count indicates:

  • if data is flowing into the Ed-Fi API
  • the data for a particular school (not for an entire district)

Use the Assessment Roster Screen

Follow these steps:

  1. Click the WISEhome link on the WISEhome and WISEsecure Login Information page to log into WISEhome.
  2. Open the WISEdata Portal.
  3. From the blue toolbar at the top of the app, click Resources.
  4. From the tabs within Resources, click Assessment Roster.
  5. Under Filters, click Select a School.
  6. Select the school of interest. If you belong to a school district with many schools, type the first letter of the school. This jumps you to that section of the alphabetical list of schools.
  7. When reviewing the data, hover your mouse over the (i) info bubble in each row to understand why that data is relevant to aimswebPlus assessment registration and reporting.

The Total Count column displays the numerical value of each record type. These numbers should accurately reflect the number of students, the number of assessment registrations for K4-grade 3 students, staff who give the assessments, and the number of completed screenings.

Use Pearson’s Act 20 Rostering Guide for the current school year (linked on Pearson's aimswebPlus: Wisconsin Act 20 page) to help you resolve issues. You might find the following sections of the guide especially useful for troubleshooting:

  • API Endpoints
  • Data Mapping (WISEdata to aimswebPlus)
  • Formatting Student ID Data
  • Resolving Data Mismatches (including from third-party tools)

Verify Data in WISE apps and in WISEdata Exports

Validate Your Data

Resolve errors and warnings using DPI’s Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs). Click the hyperlink for the KBA linked to each validation message within WISEdata to open its KBA. Read the KBA and use the “How to Fix” section to help you resolve issues with your data. You can also search DPI’s KBA Portal  by typing in keywords or the four-digit validation code.

Each student needs a Student Education Organization Association (SEOA) in order for that student to appear in aimswebPlus.

Identify Patterns of Data Quality Issues

To check for possible errors in large amounts of data at once, download the WISEdata Exports listed below and sort the data to find patterns.

Start by checking for some common errors that you can identify in data exports. Ensure that the following is set in each of the following data exports:

  • Student Demographics – Student Characteristics export:
    • Gender exists
    • Ethnicity exists
    • Demographics appear in this export (meaning that they successfully flowed from the SIS to WISEdata)
  • All Enrollment – Mass Enrollment export:
    • SSA Entry Date is for the current school year
  • Roster – Staff export (if you are not using a third-party tool):
    • Staff School Association is set to “Y” for all staff
    • Staff Section Association is set to “Y” for most staff at elementary schools
  • Roster – Sections – Staff and Student Count export (if you are not using a third-party tool):
    • For each grade level in K4 – 3rd grade that has both students and courses, ensure that at least one course exists.

To spot patterns of errors in exports, you might:

  • sort the Staff export by the Contact Email column to find staff who previously worked elsewhere and whose staffEducationOrganizationContactAssociation you have not updated.
  • sort the Student Characteristics export by the Gender column or by the DPI Race/Ethnicity Code column to find students for whom this data element is missing.
    • Tip: Right-click the column header and choose “Sort: Sort A to Z.” Scroll to the bottom of the sheet to find students for whom this cell is blank.

Need more assistance?

If you need assistance with:

  • the Ed-Fi Credential application, submit WISE Help Ticket.
  • configuring your SIS, please contact your vendor.
  • aimswebPlus, contact Pearson at aimswebsupport@pearson.com or +1 (866) 313-6194 and select option two from the phone menu.

  • setting up rostering for grade levels other than 4k-3 (if you have purchased Pearson for other grade levels), contact Pearson.