NeedsAssessment

=//Needs Assessment//=

**The Ohio SSID**
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) requires that all public school (preschool through 12th grade) students in Ohio have a unique identifier known as the State Student IDentification number (SSID). This SSID allows the state and school districts to track students longitudinally. It also reduces the chance that duplicate funding will happen. For these two reasons the SSID is extremely important and as such must be obtained correctly.

Desired Situation
One hundred percent of time, SSIDs will be assigned based on accurate information, free of interpretation and, once assigned, stay with the child through his/her school career. This is the desired situation because this level of accuracy will increase funding and reduce labor costs to districts for corrective action. It will improve data reliability for longitudinal studies - which drive funding for local education agencies; state education agencies and the federal government.

Current Situation
The SSID system was implemented in 2001. Since then there has been a roughly 40% turnover in district personnel responsible for obtaining the SSIDs. With this turn-over the accuracy of the SSID assignment has dropped. In 2004 there were 4,284 SSIDs deactivated (an SSID is deactivated when it is determined that a student has been assigned two SSIDs). This number showed a steady drop in successive years until a rise in 2008 resulted in 2,019 SSIDs being deactivated. These statistics come from Jaimie McQuirt, IBM Global Business Sytems. Ms. McQuirt is the project manager for the SSID project.

SSIDs Deactivated by Year The cost of these duplicate SSIDs include both personnel costs as well as potential losses in foundation funding from the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). When an SSID is reported by two school districts the state will not provide funding to both districts - ODE divides the funding and each district gets 50% of the normal funding. As a base, this amount is about $5,500 - but can be higher for special education students. Thus - funding losses can cost thousands of dollars to school districts. The personnel costs come in the time it takes for school personnel to detect and resolve duplicate SSID issues. As a former district EMIS Coordinator, I would estimate this task can take between two and four hours to resolve. This can add quickly in personnel costs - especially if new EMIS coordinators are not properly trained to obtain SSIDs.
 * 2004 || 4,284 ||
 * 2005 || 3,272 ||
 * 2006 || 2,245 ||
 * 2007 || 1,643 ||
 * 2008 || 2,019 ||

There are also more intangible costs related to the reliability of data. ODE can exclude data for a student where an SSID issue exists. If a student is not included because of an SSID issue then a district's report card rating can be higher or lower than it should be. There is anecdotal evidence of districts missing a report card indicator because of unresolved SSID issues. This can cost the district public relations nightmares - it is difficult for a superintendent to explain why the district "really did meet the measure" when the official state report card indicates it did not.

Another intangible cost related to reliability is the fact that this student data is used to make decisions about school programs. The district, the state, and the federal government all use this data to determine "what works". While this discrepancy can be factored into the equation as a + or - deviation - it still skews the data unnecessarily!

The Gap
The gap lies between current accuracy versus perfect. Due to the fact that the gap can cost a minimum of $5,500 per student and the minimum number of identified duplicate SSIDs equaled 2,019 in 2008 - the minimum cost could equal $5,552,250. The gap exists because of two issues - the large number of new EMIS Coordinators and the absence of any training for them. The gap can be closed with training. This training can keep the gap closed by being offered as an on-going online module offered to EMIS Coordinators as needed.

The Goal
The goal of this project is that district personnel will accurately obtain SSIDs.