October 25, 2016 Dear County and District Superintendents and Charter School Administrators: Consistent with the State Superintendent’s Blueprint for Great Schools 2.0, the California Department of Education (CDE) continues to streamline the collection of data and increase its quality to facilitate data-driven decision-making in support of continuous improvement at both the state and local levels. The next major step in this ongoing effort is the transition of the California Special Education Management Information System (CASEMIS) data collection into the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). The one-time work associated with this transition will translate into ongoing benefits that include reduced data-related workload and increased data quality. Perhaps most importantly, this integration of data will also support programmatic efforts to include students with disabilities (students with individualized education plans or service plans) to a greater extent in the general education environment. The success of this important effort depends on strong collaboration between the CDE, the Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs), local educational agencies (LEAs), and student information system (SIS) and special education system (SES) vendors. It will be especially critical for local CALPADS and special education staff to receive support to work closely together during and following the transition. The CDE has developed a high level timeline that includes a test phase in 2018–19 and full implementation in 2019–20. A more detailed timeline is attached. While full implementation is in the future, it is important that LEAs begin now to modify existing business processes to ensure integrity between data maintained by local SIS and SES. The CDE has already begun discussions with SELPAs and SES vendors, and will begin to reach out to LEA-level special education and CALPADS staff. Please forward this information to key special education staff and CALPADS LEA administrators. Project updates will be provided primarily through the CASEMIS to CALPADS (C2C) Listserv. Information on how to subscribe to the C2C Listserv can be found on the CDE CALPADS Listservs Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sp/cl/listservs.asp. For more information, please contact Shiyloh Duncan-Becerril, Administrator, Special Education Division, by phone at 916-327-3547 or by email at sbecerril@cde.ca.gov; or Karen Almquist, Administrator, CALPADS/CBEDS/CDS Operations Office, by phone at 916-319-0529 or by email at kalmquis@cde.ca.gov.
