This page contains resources to assist district staff with processes and procedures related to cohort maintenance. All student data related to cohort tracking in PowerSchool must be complete and accurate by day 180 of the school year.
Documentation
Student Locator BI Report User Guide
The Student Locator BI Report User Guide contains instructions for accessing the Student Locator BI Report on the SCDE Report Portal, generating the report, and viewing the results. For questions about the Student Locator BI report, please submit an e-services ticket to SCDE for assistance.
Additional Resources & Information
2024-2025 Cohort Maintenance Webinar Series Videos
- Intro : Cohort Maintenance Webinar Series (1 min, 29 sec)
- Overview of Cohorts and Files (8 min, 51 sec)
- Cohort Identification and PowerSchool Data Entry (2 min, 42 sec)
- Helpful PowerSchool Searches (1 min, 15 sec)
- Cohort Progression Maintenance Manual (1 min, 24 sec)
- At a Glance : Cohort Progression Maintenance Files (0 min, 50 sec)
- History File (2 min, 47 sec)
- GR9 23, 24, and 25 Files (1 min, 29 sec)
- Basefile (0 min, 29 sec)
- How to Use the Files (1 min, 13 sec)
- At a Glance : Assigning 9GR (0 min, 20 sec)
- Including Students in Cohort (0 min, 51 sec)
District Resources
Important Data Elements Related to Cohort Maintenance:
- “Ninth Grade Code” (9GR)
- “Student Should Remain in Cohort?” field on the Cohort Maintenance Page (i.e., Denominator)
- Entry and Exit dates
- Exit reasons and comments
- Adult Education-related fields on the SC Student Information page
- Employability Credential-related fields on the SC Student Information page
- GED fields on the SC Student Information page
- Diploma fields on the SC Student Information page
- Graduation Date on the SC Student Information page
Cohort Maintenance Checklist:
- Which students do not have a 9th grade code assigned in PowerSchool, and for those who don’t, do they need one?
Hint: check your Level Data validations or use some of the handy PowerSchool searches that our team has shared!
- Which students do not have a value of Y - Yes assigned in PowerSchool for the “Student Should Remain in Cohort?” (denominator), and for those who don’t, should they?
Note: “Y - Yes” doesn’t put anyone in the denominator, but it is there so that school and district personnel can tell which students they’ve confirmed. Students are automatically included in the denominator unless a value of “N - No” is selected.
- For students who have left our school, plus any other students for whom we have documentation making it appropriate to remove them from the cohort*, have we taken the step to assign them a value of N - No for the “Student Should Remain in Cohort?” (denominator) field?
*Please see the text beginning on page 16 of our Cohort Maintenance Progression Manual for information on documentation required for exclusion from a cohort. Remember that you need to maintain documentation that provides your reasoning for removing a student.
Cohort Maintenance FAQ:
There are some differences between last year and this year in the documentation on DJJ Requests for Records and whether or not to exclude students from a cohort. Which guidance should we use?
Please use the latest guidelines document which is the Cohort Maintenance Progression Manual. Note that this document clarifies that you may remove a “student as a transfer out of the cohort if they enter the diploma program" (p. 22). The district may choose to reach out to DJJ for clarification on whether or not the student is in a diploma program at DJJ.
What should our district do if we have questions about ML and immigrant students who previously attended schools outside of the US?
Please have your district ESEA Title III/MLP coordinator reach out to the ESEA Title III/MLP team within the SCDE Office of Federal and State Accountability for clarification on identifying ML and immigrant students and assigning 9GRs to those students. +link
Are districts required to use a particular method or system to track their documentation around students excluded from cohorts?
While districts must be able to provide documentation if students are excluded from a cohort, SCDE does not require a particular method or system for doing so; districts have the freedom to choose their preferred methods of tracking documentation for this purpose.
In PowerSchool, I am seeing students with a particular denominator code, but I’m not seeing the same in the basefile I’m looking at. Why is there a difference?
This is most likely because the needed PowerSchool data elements were not coded and published to Ed-Fi before the file was pulled. Data must be published from PowerSchool to Ed-Fi to ensure that it is up-to-date in the district and state Ed-Fi environments. For assistance troubleshooting publishing issues, please contact the Data Collection Team at PowerSchool@ed.sc.gov
Why is it important to maintain accurate cohort (i.e., “accountability cohort”) data for South Carolina students?
SCDE requires that all student records be accurate by day 180 of the school year.
Who is included in a cohort?
Please see pages 4 and 5 of our Cohort Maintenance Progression Manual.
On the Cohort Maintenance Worksheet page in PowerSchool, must districts populate any fields in addition to the “Student Should Remain in Cohort?” field in section E?
No! The only required field on that page is “Student Should Remain in Cohort?” Some districts choose to use other fields on that page, but this is for their own tracking purposes and is not required.
How can district staff check to see if cohort data has been successfully published to Ed-Fi?
This can be verified by going to a student’s individual publishing page and looking at the values sent to Ed-Fi. The corresponding values will appear in the student’s json (“json” is the format used for data exchange to Ed-Fi).
How can district staff check to see if their cohort data have then made it to Ed-Fi at the state level?
In the spring of each school year, several files are shared with district accountability staff: a Basefile for the current year’s graduating cohort, several non-graduating cohort files, and a History file.
If a student’s 9GR is changed after QDC1, will that student be included under both the incorrect 9GR cohort and the correct/updated one?
9GR at the end of the year determines their cohort. Please remember that all student records be accurate for cohort maintenance by day 180 of the school year.
What about summer school? How do they count if they graduate in summer but info has to be in by the 180th day?
More info is coming to address this question in March.
