IRS

Information and Reporting Services

NYSED IRS TSDL QUICK GUIDE

Teacher Student Student Data Linkage (TSDL) is the NYSED data collection system designed to comply with State and Federal laws to create a State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) and assist with teacher and principal evaluation (APPR- Annual Professional Performance Review). More about these laws and the policies governing APPR can be found in Section A of the APPR guidance document.

REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

  • All public school districts, BOCES, and charter schools are required to submit TSDL data that include information about the following:
    All building principals who are employed by their education agency;
    (See Question B4 of the APPR guidance document for the definition of “building principal” when reporting these data for evaluation purposes.)
  • All classroom teachers employed by their education agency;
    (See Questions B3, B7, and B8 of the APPR guidance document for the definition of “classroom teacher” when reporting these data for evaluation purposes.)
  • All students who are taught by those teachers, even those students for whom your agency does not have Elementary and Secondary Education and Act (ESEA) institutional accountability (e.g, students receiving educational services at a BOCES). The Department has been communicating TSDL reporting requirements with Student Management System (SMS) and Human Resource Management System (HRMS) vendors. If an education agency has questions about whether their particular system/s can comply with these requirements they should contact their vendor directly using the information found at the SMS Vendor Contact list or contact your RIC or Big 5 City School District data center.
    The procedures for reporting these data are similar to those already in place for reporting student demographic, enrollment, program service, assessment, and special education data to the SIRS. For technical support, please contact your Level 1 data center.

REQUIRED ELEMENTS
The table below describes the TSDL reporting templates that must be submitted to NYSED.

Reported from Local Data SystemsDescription
Staff Student Course Template*
  • Required for all classroom teachers.
  • Includes information to link teachers to the students they teach, including linkage start and end dates and linkage durations.
Staff Assignment Template
  • Includes information to link principals to students enrolled in programs they supervise, including linkage start and end dates.
  • Allows for principals to be reported for an entire instructional program (indicate “ALL”) or for specific grade levels (report one record per principal for each grade level).
Staff Snapshot Template
  • Includes first hire date of teacher and/or principal, first date tenured as a principal and/or teacher, and end-of-employment date (if applicable) for all reported staff.
  • Generates Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) used to create Teacher Access and Authorization (TAA) accounts. TAA provides access to Teacher Student Roster Verification (TSRV) and PMF applications.
Staff Evaluation Rating Template
  • Includes overall evaluation rating category (highly effective, effective, developing, or ineffective), the total composite effectiveness score, and subcomponent scores (state growth or other comparable measures subcomponent, locally selected measures subcomponent, other measures subcomponent) for each teacher and principal. (Charter schools are not required to report subcomponent scores. Charter schools that are not required to implement the §3012-c evaluation rating categories (i.e., highly effective, effective, developing, ineffective) must map their local evaluation rating categories to the State rating categories for State reporting purposes.)
Student Class Grade Detail Template
  • A Student Class Grade Detail record must be submitted for anyone who has a Staff Student Course template submitted, unless ALL of the following are true:
    1. No grade or other outcome is awarded for the scheduled time;
    2. No credit is earned for the scheduled time; and
    3. The linkage is not reflected on the student's report card or transcript.
  • Data must be reported for all K-12 courses, unless the course has no grade/other outcome and no credit earned and the course is not reported on the student's transcript and report card.
  • All reported courses must include a course outcome: “P” for “passing,” “F” for “fail,” or “N” for “not complete” (for any reason). Final grades (alpha or numeric) and credits attempted/earned are required to be reported for all secondary-level courses (Grades 7–12 and ungraded secondary).
  • Students who earned credit through a make-up credit program (i.e., by re-taking the course, attending summer school, taking the course online, etc.) must be reported as such in the Credit Recovery Code field.
  • The record must indicate whether or not a Regents exam score was included in the final course grade calculation.
Marking Period Code Template
  • Defines the beginning and ending dates of the marking period when students’ marks are sent home. Links marking period to a term.
Location Marking Period Template
  • Links marking period to a student’s building of enrollment code location.
Course Template
  • Links course information to a location.

*The Exclude from Evaluation Indicator field in the Staff Student Course template should be left blank until the Department provides business rules on how it should be used.

COURSE MAPPING
Several TSDL reports require information on courses. To ensure comparability among schools and districts, a statewide comprehensive course catalog has been developed. Although schools do not need to adopt these statewide codes for local use, it is necessary to map local codes to State codes when reporting data to the SIRS. Click this link to access the Course Catalog. Courses ending in State exams MUST be mapped using the REQUIRED NYSED CODES. All students enrolled in courses that culminate in a State exam must be reported as enrolled in a course mapped to the reserved course code associated with the assessment.

DATA VERIFICATION and CERTIFICATION
Strategies for Data Verification
Because of the complexity and importance of TSDL information, section 30-2.3 of the Rules of the Board of Regents requires that teachers and principals be involved in data verification efforts. In order to make this process more manageable, it is highly recommended that data be reviewed and verified throughout the school year, rather than immediately prior to the verification deadline.
In order to ensure the accuracy of the TSDL, two types of information must be reviewed and verified by teachers and other relevant school and district personnel:

  • Basic roster information, including which students are linked to which teachers and principals with what beginning and end dates.
  • Linkage Durations(enrollment and attendance), or the total course time, prior to the administration of the assessment or the end of the school year, that each student was linked to a teacher.

For more information on strategies for data certification please refer to pages 4-6 of the February 2013 memorandum from Deputy Commissioner Ken Wagner titled Updated Guidance on Reporting and Verifying Teacher-Student and Principal Linkage Information.

Teacher Access to Teacher-Student Roster Verification (TSRV) Reports
Teacher-Student Roster Verification Reports for teachers are available at: http://edp.nysed.gov. Reports will be refreshed at least weekly to reflect updates or corrections made prior to the verification deadline. Please see TRSV home page for a description of how teachers can access these Teacher-Student Roster Verification Reports, including steps that schools and districts must take to facilitate this process.

District Access to Teacher-Student Roster Verification (TSRV) Reports
Verification reports are available in the Level 2 Reporting (L2RPT) environment in advance of final data submission to help ensure that all data are reported accurately in SIRS. If data must be updated, changes must be made to the local source system and the changed data must be reported again to Level 1/Level 2 of the SIRS. Data will be refreshed weekly in Level 2 of the SIRS until August 22, 2014.
User accounts for the Level 2 reporting environment are created and managed through the State Education Department’s Delegated Account System (SEDDAS). Specific details on how to proceed with the authorization of accounts are provided by your Level 1 data center.
In addition to the verification reports available through L2RPT, throughout the data collection cycle additional reports are distributed to schools and/or districts via the Information Reporting Services Portal (IRSP). When reports are posted to the IRSP, an email notification is sent to alert designated users that a file is available for pick up.
For more information on the Level 2 reports available to assist with TSDL verification please see Appendix A of the March 2014 memorandum from Executive Director Kathleen Moorehead titled Verification and Certification of SIRS 2013-2014 School Year Data Upcoming 2014-15 Changes for Personnel Master File (PMF).

Data Correction
As with all other school year data, if the information displayed in the Teacher-Student Roster or Principal Roster Verification Reports is incomplete or inaccurate, the data should be corrected in the local source system (e.g., the student management system) and submitted again to the SIRS. Schools and districts are responsible for creating and communicating clear processes and identifying contact people for identifying data inaccuracies and correcting this information prior to the verification deadline.

Data Certification
Consistent with the reporting of all other school year data, superintendents, BOCES district superintendents, and charter school principals will be responsible for certifying the completeness and accuracy of all TSDL information. To do so, and consistent with other data collection and reporting initiatives, superintendents, BOCES district superintendents, and charter school principals will need to create internal processes to gather assurances from teachers and principals that they (1) have reviewed the information prior to the verification deadline and determined it to be complete and accurate, and (2) understand that the data will be used for evaluation and other analytic purposes.

TSDL DATA FLOW and TIME LINE OVERVIEW
The following PowerPoint presentation provides an overview of the TSDL data flow process.

NYSED Teacher Student Data Linkage (TSDL) Overview PowerPoint Slides (59KB)

Additional Help for Data Coordinators
Data Coordinator for TSDL Resources is a webpage providing resources to assist data coordinators manage the TSDL reporting process.

Please send questions about this website to datasupport@nysed.gov

 

Last Updated: July 21, 2014