ARCHIVED INFORMATION: Questions and Answers Regarding the 2005-06 SSS Annual Performance Report (APR)
(Edited transcript of discussion with Ms. Frances Bergeron, U.S. Department of Education) January 12, 2007 University of Washington TRIO Training--La Jolla, CA
See more questions answered in the Follow-up Q&A posted January 29, 2007 and February 12, 2007.
QUESTION: Field #27 (DegreeCD): What is the correct response for participant in 2-yr SSS program who transfers without completing degree or certificate?
RESPONSE: Option #9: Withdrew from grantee institution prior to obtaining degree/certificate or did not return to grantee institution.
QUESTION: Field #15 (PartCD): Must a student have been coded PartCD = 4 (prior year participant no longer enrolled at grantee institution) in the previous year’s APR (2004-05) in order to be coded as a reentry participant (PARTCD = 6 or 7) on the 2005-06 APR?
RESPONSE: No. It would depend on the amount of time the participant was out of school (not enrolled at grantee institution). If the participant had not enrolled at the grantee institution for only one reporting year, the participant should have been coded PartCD = 4 in the previous APR. However, if the participant was not enrolled for more than one reporting year, the grantee may have dropped the record from the previous year’s APR. In this situation, the grantee would add back this record to the data file for 2005-06.
QUESTION: Field #15 (PartCD): Will reentry participants still have to complete their degrees within three consecutive calendar years (2-yr SSS) or six consecutive calendar years (4-year SSS) in order to be included in the project’s graduation rate?
RESPONSE: Yes, for the purposes of the prior experience (PE) graduation rate objective. The reentry participant stays in his/her original cohort that is based on the year in which the individual was first served by the SSS project. ED, however, will also calculate additional graduation rates (i.e., the percentage that completes 2-year degree within 4 years) and publish these in the program profile reports. The PE objective, however, is measured based on either a 3 year timeframe or a 6 year timeframe.
QUESTION: Field #15 (PartCD): Will a student whose PartCD code is 5 (new participant 2006 summer session only; part of 2006-07 cohort) be included in the total of active students for 2005-06, and therefore included in determining whether the project served the number of students it was funded to serve?
RESPONSE: Yes. The sum of the number of new (PartCD = 1), new summer session only (PartCD = 5), reentry (receiving project services) (PartCD = 6) and continuing participants (PartCD = 2) equals the total number of participants the project served during the 2005-2006 reporting period.
QUESTION: Field 27 (DegreeCD): Will students who are coded 1 (Certificate/diploma for occupational, educational program, less than two years) or 2 (Certificate/diploma for occupational, technical, or educational program, at least 2-year program) be counted in their project’s graduation rate?
RESPONSE: No. For the graduation objective for prior experience, success is defined for a 2-year institution as participants graduating with an associate’s degree or transferring from a 2-year to 4-year institution.
QUESTION: Field #23 (Transfers): If a project can document a student’s transfer and subsequent enrollment in another school, can that student be included in the calculation of the project’s persistence rate?
RESPONSE: Yes, provided the participant transferred from a 2-year to 4-year institution. Only transfer participants who transfer from a 2-year to 4-year institution may be included in the calculation of the project’s persistence rate.
QUESTION: If a student served by a 2-year SSS project in 05-06 transfers to a different 2-year SSS project and enrolls fall semester 2006, will that student be considered a persister?
RESPONSE: No. The project’s persistence rate for prior experience is calculated based on the number of participants who persist from one academic year to the next at the grantee institution and those who graduate and/or transfer from a 2-year to a 4-year institution.
QUESTION: Will the project’s persistence rate be calculated based on the student’s status in Field #21, Persistence Status?
RESPONSE: A project’s persistence rate will be calculated based on the data in field #21 as well as data on degree completion information in field #27.
QUESTION: Field #15 (PartCD): Should a student whose PartCD was 4 on the 04-05 APR and who did not enroll during 05-06 be dropped from the 05-06 and future APR’s unless they reenroll?
RESPONSE: Yes. These participant records may be dropped.
QUESTION: For 4-year SSS projects, if a student was reported in 04-05 as having graduated during that year, can they be dropped from the 05-06 and future APR’s? Similarly, for 2-year SSS programs, if a student was reported in 04-05 as having graduated or transferred during that year, can they be dropped from the 05-06 and future APR’s?
RESPONSE: Yes. However, for this year, the online Web application for the 2005-06 APR submission includes a report called “Match to Prior”. This report will display all participant records that were on the 2004-05 data file (except those coded as PartCD = 4 in 2004-05) that were not included on the 2005-06 data file. The grantee may then choose to do one of the following: (1) add these records back onto the 2005-06 data file and change the participant status codes to 4; or (2) provide an explanation in the box provided that participants who had graduated or transferred during the 2004-05 were not included on the 2005-06 data file.
Suggestion: If any of the critical information (i.e., degree date) was not provided on these students in the 2004-05 data file, ED recommends that you include these records on the 2005-06 data file, change the PartCD (field #15) to 4 and update other critical data fields such as degree date. In addition to reporting that the students received degrees, it is also very important that a grantee note the degree dates because degree dates will be used in determining whether or not the grantee met its graduation objective (i.e., degrees completed within the 3 year or 6 year time period).
QUESTION: In completing the 2005-06 APR, is it desirable to download the 2004-05 APR and make sure that all of those “critical” fields are complete for those reported as graduated in 2004-05? And if the student records were not complete, update the student records and include these on the 2005-06 APR?
RESPONSE: Yes to both questions. Be sure to change the PartCD to 4 and update the participant records with additional “critical” information that was not available or was not included on the 2004-05 APR.
If a grantee provided all the critical information on graduates on the previous year’s data file, the grantee is not required to add these records to the 2005-06 APR. However, the “Match to Prior” report is going to alert you that these student records should be on the 2005-06 file. In this situation, just provide a brief explanation in the box provided to bypass the data check.
QUESTION: Since SSS graduation rates will be calculated based on the number of students in the relevant cohort, can projects find out how many students ED has in its database for each cohort? The reason for this question is that there are a number of new directors who may not be familiar with the database their projects have used for the last six years and thus are not sure if their project records are consistent with ED’s numbers for each cohort.
RESPONSE: Even with staff turnover, ED expects grantees to maintain copies of the APR data files submitted to ED in prior years. ED’s calculations will be based on the individual participant data the grantee submitted for the relevant years. The cohort includes all new participants the project served in each of those years. The calculations of cohort numbers by grantee have not yet been completed. As ED looks at the grantee level data, there may be some situations in which the grantees submitted incomplete data that may impact the cohort numbers (i.e., if the participant status information was reported incorrectly).
QUESTION: Field #20 (Persistence/Graduation Status (end of the 2005-06 academic year): What is the correct response for “prior year participants, no longer enrolled at grantee institution” (PartCD = 4, Field #15)?
RESPONSE: Since these prior year participants (PartCD = 4) were not enrolled at the grantee institution during the 2005-06 academic year, select Option 0 = No response. The other options for this field (Options #1 through 10) are applicable only to those participants that were enrolled at the grantee institution during the 2005-06 academic year.