The Office of Data Governance (ODG), the office that does a significant share of SDP’s data quality work through their management of the Certify system, has been busy this quarter working with schools and the Office of Educational Technology to improve the online registration (OLR) process. ODG’s work on the OLR process has been aimed at ensuring that students who registered this fall had their applications processed in a timely manner and that student records were entered and stored correctly. This work is being done through the creation of ‘rules’ in the Certify system, which generates reports of inaccuracy or inconsistency in school data and alerts school leadership when action is needed. One of these Certify rules, known as EN403, looks for cases where online registration applications have been marked as being complete but no subsequent enrollment record exists in a District school. When this happens, the system alerts schools to enroll these students. This rule also allows the data management teams to identify cases in which more than one OLR application was created for the same student as well as mismatches between the OLR and the Student Information System.

If you’re interested in learning more about the new rules in Certify, you can find steppers at https://sishelp.philasd.org/certify/.