Overview
There are several specific settings that must be set correctly by the MIS staff for the FOCUS system to work well with WDIS reporting. FOCUS adds new settings from time to time, so it is a good idea to double check these each year to make sure you have everything assigned correctly for WDIS. In this article we cover these settings and our recommendations.
System Preferences
First, make sure you are in the WDIS school at the top right of FOCUS. Then under Setup > System Preferences on the School Preferences tab, sub-tab Attendance you will find a setting called Teachers enter hours present (recommended for some adult/vocational schools). This should be checked for WDIS schools because the teachers need to enter hourly attendance so that FOCUS can determine the student has met the enrollment threshold.
Florida Reports Options
Under Florida Reports > District Options there are several settings that impact WDIS:
- WDIS - Pulling Survey F 20YY-20ZZ from current school year 20XX-20YY - Recommended: Checked Typically districts that offer a WDIS program during the Summer set it up in the same school year they reported the previous Survey W & S under, if you do this you must check the box. However, if your district sets this up in the new school year you would need to make sure the box was UNCHECKED and that your dates are setup appropriately.
- WDIS - Hours reported as next highest integer value (ceiling) rather than with regular rounding: Recommended: No Formats
- WDIS - Disable AGE Attendance Threshold Policy - Recommended: Unchecked Attendance threshold is required, but this does require teachers to enter hourly attendance. If you do not enter hourly attendance it must be tracked on paper and would require significant manual work if a student does not meet the attendance threshold.
- WDIS - Assume Scheduled Hours for Missing Attendance Information - Recommended: Unchecked Attendance is required in WDIS, if you are not tracking attendance in FOCUS and instead using paper you can check this box to assume attendance but keep in mind this means everyone is assumed present for missing attendance.
- WDIS - Pull test data based on test date range instead of survey date range - Recommended: Unchecked If checked this option pulls test data based on the test date ranges set in the Survey Dates tab when generating the extract instead of the defined survey window.
- WDIS - Disable AGE 30 Day Schedule Validation - Recommended: Unchecked When selected, Focus will not check schedule records when evaluating the data but will consider the WDIS survey dates set on the Survey Dates tab; therefore, if a student dropped an ABE course over 30 days ago and in the same WDIS Survey window, that student cannot be rescheduled into the same section.
- WDIS - Disable Fiscal Split Extract Logic - Recommended: Unchecked For Survey F Summer reporting period, any course that starts in June and runs into July DOE wants two separate sections, but to keep districts from having to reschedule the class, Focus automatically creates a second section in the extracts to DOE and prepends a D to the section number to make the section unique.
- WDIS - Pull log field certs from all school years (Default Pulls Current and Previous Years) - Recommended: Unchecked
- WDIS - Don't pull test records that are missing an Adult Education Function Level - Recommended: Unchecked
- WDIS - Assign Functioning Levels CASAS: Recommended: 1 year, typically students are pretested when they start a course, FOCUS will look back 6 months for a pretest by default but in some cases districts use a pretest earlier than that. We recommend 1 year here.
- WDIS - Assign Functioning Levels TABE: Recommended: 1 year, typically students are pretested when they start a course, FOCUS will look back 6 months for a pretest by default but in some cases districts use a pretest earlier than that. We recommend 1 year here.