Information Services

2005-06 Missing Student Report

To:SIMS Contacts
From:Paula Girouard O’Sullivan, Director of Information Services
Date:January 31, 2006

Now that the October 1, 2005 SIMS data is complete, the Department needs to follow-up on those students in grades 6-12 that were reported as being enrolled at the end of the 2004-05 school year, and were not reported by any district in the October 1, 2005 data. PLEASE NOTE that this is a new set of students not yet viewed by any district. This should not be confused with the 2004-05 Missing Student Report recently completed by some districts. There are many valid reasons for why the student may not have been reported as of October 1, 2005. However, given the high-stakes nature of the dropout data, we need to collect detailed information on why the students were not reported. The application can be accessed through the security portal, with the security role of "SIMS Data." For each student listed for your district, we ask that you provide a reason (from a dropdown list) for why the student was not reported in the October 1, 2005 data. The options available are:
  1. Transferred to an out-of-state school
  2. Transferred to in-state private school
  3. Transferred to in-state public school
  4. Graduated/Certificate of Attainment
  5. Dropout
  6. Permanent Exclusion
  7. Reached Maximum Age (for special education students only)
  8. SASID Issue (you will be asked to provide the new SASID reported for 10/1/05)
  9. Deceased
More specific instructions are available from the first page of the application. If we do not receive data from your district by Thursday March 9, 2006, we may need to assume that all of the students listed are dropouts. Any student reported as a dropout, or assumed to be a dropout due to lack of response, will be included in your district's 2005-06 dropout count, unless the student enrolls in school by October 1, 2006. All dropouts, in compliance with the National Center for Education Statistics standards, will be counted as a dropout for the grade and school in which they failed to enroll. If you have any questions, please contact your DOE Field Technologist or the Data Collection office at 781-338-DATA (3282).



Last Updated: January 31, 2006



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