Overview
Exceptional Student Education encompasses a wide range of services that are offered within the district including gifted, 504 and special needs exceptionalities. All of the data related to these services must be entered into Focus in the designated fields.
In this document we will explain the Exceptional Student Education fields within Focus and state reporting tools that should be used to validate your data.
ESE Demographic Data Entry
THE FIELD SET UP IN YOUR DISTRICT MAY APPEAR DIFFERENT THAN THE FIELD DISPLAYED IN THIS DOCUMENT, FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR FIELD SET UP CONTACT YOUR DISTRICT MIS ADMINISTRATOR.
Each district has their data sorted into student categories. These categories make locating data elements easy. Each district has their ESE data grouped under a category called ESE or Exceptional Student Education.
To locate this category open a student record and make sure you are displaying their demographic menu. When you are displaying the demographic menu you should see a list of categories, to access the students ESE fields, click on the ESE or Exceptional Student category. This screen can be arranged in any order to fit your districts needs.
ESE Exceptionalities
Every district will have a field called ESE Exceptionalities. This field is a logging field meaning that you can log multiple records within this one field.
To add a new record use the pull down menus to make your selections. The data entered into this field should come directly from the student’s IEP.
- Handicap: A code to identify each exceptionality including the primary exceptionality and all other exceptionalities (including related services) for any student enrolled in or eligible for enrollment in the public schools of a district who requires special instruction or related services to take full advantage of or respond to educational programs and opportunities because of a physical, mental, emotional, social or learning exceptionality. This includes Gifted.
- Primary: Check this box to indicate which of the students exceptionalities is the primary. Only one line can be marked as the primary.
- Placement Program Status: A code defining the initial eligibility and placement status of the student.
- Service Type: Use this field to indicate is the student’s exceptionality is Active, Inactive or Pending. This is for local tracking only and is not reported to DOE.
- Ref Reason: A code which gives the reason for which the initial student referral for exceptional education was made.
- Referral Date: The date the initial student referral for exceptional education was made. This is for local tracking only and is not reported to DOE.
- Consent Date: The date parental consent was given.
- Eval Date: The date the student receive their initial evaluation for this exceptionality.
- Eligibility Date: This is the date the initial eligibility or ineligibility determination for each ESE program was made by the staffing committee.
- Placement Date: The initiation date for services on the initial Individual Educational Plan (IEP), Individualized Family Support Plan (IFSP), Educational Plan (EP) or Services Plan. The placement date must be entered for the exceptionality to be considered active and reported to DOE.
- Dismissal Date: If applicable, the code indicating the date of dismissal by the Exceptional Student Education administrator or designee from exceptional student education for students with disabilities.
Once all of the fields on the first record have been filled in, hit the enter key on your keyboard to add the line (the unsaved records will highlight in yellow). Once all of the exceptionalities have been entered, click save.
Other ESE Fields
The ESE category also houses additional fields some of which are local and some that are reported to the state. Below you will find the definitions of the additional fields that are reported to the state, these fields may appear in a different order on your site than they appear here:
IDEA Educational Environment: Identifies the educational environment in which a student with disabilities is served.
ESE FEFP Code: The number of the Florida Education Finance Program in which a student earns FTE in a class or section of a course. The options include
- 111 - K-3 Basic, with ESE Services
- 112- 4-8 Basic, with ESE Services
- 113-9-12 Basic, with ESE Services
- 254- Support Level 4
- 255- Support Level 5
In most cases, the FEFP code assigned on the student’s ESE tab will override the FEFP code assigned on the student’s schedule. However, there are cases when you may not want that to happen, in this case you may wish to only assign the FEFP codes on each of the student’s schedule records.
For students who have a 254 or 255 FEFP code Focus will automatically NOT report these FEFP Code for part-time virtual courses, those which have virtual school not marked as their primary enrollment (with exception of 7006). Instead Focus reports the applicable 111, 112 or 113 code.
Time, Total Student Week : The total amount of time a student with a disability is scheduled to attend school each week. This should be reported in minutes per week. All scheduled time i.e., class time, recess, lunch, and time between classes must be included in the total.
Time, With Non-Disabled : The total amount of time that a student with a disability is with non-disabled peers, including time with school and work place peers. This should be reported in minutes per week. Include class time, lunch, recess, and time between classes if this time is spent with non-disabled peers.
Plan Date: The date of the most recent Individual Educational Plan, Individualized Family Support Plan, Educational Plan or Services Plan development or review meeting.
IEP Expiration Date : The date the IEP will expire.
Gifted Eligibility: Eligibility criteria under which a student was found eligible for the gifted program.
Exceptional Student, 60-Day Exception/Extension: Identifies whether there is an exception or extension to the 60-day timeline for initial evaluation.
Alternate Assessment Administered – This field is used to identify whether or not a student with disabilities will be participating in the Florida Standards Alternate Assessment (FSAA)-Datafolio or Florida Standards Alternate Assessment (FSAA)-Performance Task.
Additional School Year – this field is used to indicate students who either receive a COC and wish to remain in school another year to earn a standard diploma or students with disabilities who defer a standard diploma or earned a special diploma but choose to remain in school. Note: This field is reported in the student Demographic format.
Dismissing ESE Students
No data should be removed from the ESE screen in Focus. All data should be retained for historical purposes.
To dismiss an ESE exceptionality for a student update the following fields on the ESE screen:
- Uncheck Primary
- Update the Service Type to I - Inactive
- Enter Dismissal Date
- Update the ESE FEFP Code to N/A (if there is no other active exceptionality)
Once the student has been dismissed, adjust the student schedule as necessary by dropping appropriate ESE courses on the date dismissed and adjust the minutes.
Scheduling ESE Students
Pull-Out Therapy
If a student is receiving pull-out services (speech, language, OT, PT etc.) they should have a schedule record that reflects this for the period they are pulled out for. On the schedule, the Class Minutes Weekly for the period the student is pulled out for should be reflected on the pull-out class and deducted from the class they are pulled out from.
First step is to make sure you have a section created for the therapy class under Scheduling > Courses & Sections, if not be sure to add the section with the appropriate teacher, term, calendar etc.
Then on the Florida tab at the section level Scheduling Method should be set to G - Individual or Small Group Instruction
If the pull-out section has a nonstandard meeting time where the students assigned meet differing periods during the week, it should also be flagged with the Pull-Out checkbox. When reporting the section to DOE Focus will add the 88 ending period anytime the pullout field is checked. This indicates a non-standard meeting time and that section will not be included in class-size calculation.
On the student’s schedule, schedule the student into the applicable therapy courses. Enter the number of Class Minutes Weekly that the student receives therapy for and deduct that number of minutes from the class they are being pulled-out from. In this example, the class meets for 210 minutes per week and the student is receiving 60 minutes of pull-out Language Therapy, so the Social Studies class they are pulled out from is reduced to 150 minutes.
Do not forget to update the student’s schedule if the IEP changes the number of class minutes weekly. It is usually best to withdraw the student from the courses and reschedule them to preserve the historical minutes they had been served for.
Reporting Therapies Occurring Less than Weekly
Districts in which schools are scheduling therapies (e.g., speech, occupational, physical, orientation, and mobility) on less than a weekly basis must report these classes in the manner described below. Scheduling of this type is reported as a weekly average of the time students are scheduled in therapy. In order to properly report the therapies occurring less than weekly:
- Determine the student’s eligibility for reporting as it is normally determined.
- Add together the time the student is in therapy for the span of time being reported. This will include the survey week and the other weeks of the valid scheduling option.
- Use an average of the Class Minutes, Weekly. Example: A student is scheduled for two hours of occupational therapy every other week. The therapy is either pull-out (the student goes to a therapy room) or push-in (the occupational therapist integrates the therapy into the student’s normal schedule). During survey week, the student receives zero hours of therapy. For the weeks prior to and following survey week, the student receives two hours of therapy. For survey week, the student’s time for calculating FTE should be based on an average of one hour for therapy using the therapy course number and one hour subtracted from the course during which the therapy occurs.
Example: A student is scheduled for two hours of occupational therapy every other week. During survey week, the student receives zero hours of therapy. For the weeks prior to and following survey week, the student receives two hours of therapy. For survey week, the student’s time for calculating FTE should be based on an average of one hour for therapy. In Focus for the survey you will enter 60 for Class Minutes Weekly.
Inclusion
Please Click HERE to access our inclusion article.
Co-Teaching
When two teachers are providing instruction through co-teaching both teachers share responsibility for planning, delivering, and evaluating instruction for all students in a class/subject for the entire class period. If one co-teacher is providing the specially designed instruction as indicated on a student’s IEP, the teacher must meet certification requirements for any ESE area. (For example: If specially designed instruction is provided to address a student’s visual impairment in accordance with the IEP, the required certification is visually impaired.)
To enter this scenario in Focus, at the section level select the Co-Teachers tab and enter the co-teacher’s information. This information is the same as above under Inclusion with the exceptions that you do not need to enter minutes for co-teachers and you will use the Scheduling Method as C – Co-teaching on both the Co-Teachers tab and on the Florida tab.
Test Accommodations
Test Accommodations should be entered as stated in the student’s IEP, the test accommodation fields listed below are pulled for Pre-ID extracts for generating testing materials for the students. These fields may have a different name and may appear on a different tab on your district’s system. If you are not sure where to find this field contact your MIS person.
Although there are many accommodations listed in each field, some are not applicable in the pre-id process and will only be used for local tracking purposes.
- Test Accommodations (ID 200000222) – this is used for ELA, Math, EOC Algebra I, EOC Geometry, EOC Biology, EOC Civics, EOC US History
- DOE Test Accommodations Field (ID 829) – this is used for Fed State format reporting and for ACCESS for ELLs 2.0 pre-id
- Test Accommodations, PERT (ID 2012000022)
504 Data Entry
You can find 504 related fields located under the category titled 504 Info. Some districts use additional fields on the 504 Info tab to locally track additional information regarding the 504 student, but only one field is required for reporting to DOE.
Section 504 Eligible: Identifies that the student is an eligible student under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, excluding students who are identified as eligible students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Options include:
- I - Student was evaluated and is not eligible under Section 504.
- N - Student is an eligible student under Section 504 and does not require a Section 504 Plan.
- Y - Student is an eligible student under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and has a Section 504 Plan.
- Z - Not Applicable
Hospital/Homebound
Data Validation
ESE data is reported in survey 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Focus incudes data validation reports for ESE students to help you identify errors in your data. To access these reports navigate to Florida Reports > DOE Data Verification Reports. These reports must be checked and errors corrected prior to each survey period as ESE data is updated frequently.
Additionally, Focus provides a set of reports to help validate that all special area students are entered into the system. To access these reports navigate to Florida Reports > Survey Accuracy Reports.
On the left we have highlighted the applicable reports.
254 254 FTE, 504, ESE Students, Full Time Hospital Homebound, Intermittent Hospital Homebound will list all of the students who will be sent for the selected Survey in that reporting category. The school should verify that all of their students in these categories appear in the report. Should any student be found missing from his/her applicable category, first attempt to verify all the data has been entered according to the instructions in the document, and if no errors are found contact your district MIS contact to help you troubleshoot the issue.
The two reports listed at the bottom Students Schedule into a Therapy Course without Exceptionality and Student with Exceptionality and not scheduled into a Therapy Course should help to verify that applicable Therapy courses are entered and reported correctly.