All students in California public schools are required to have an English Language Acquisition record in CALPADS. And generally-speaking, only one status may be listed for each student as determined by the original Home Language Survey completed by the parent/guardian during the student’s first enrollment into a California public school.
Statuses include: English Only (EO), English Learner (EL), Initial Fluent English Proficient (IFEP), Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP), or To Be Determined (TBD).
According to the CALPADS Data Guide v10, Chapter 3: LEAs do not need to update the ELAS of incoming students transferring from another California school whose statuses already exist in CALPADS. Instead, LEAs should update their student information system with students’ ELAS in CALPADS. CALPADS provides students’ current ELAS on various extracts to facilitate this process. Source: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sp/cl/systemdocs.asp
How to Create a New Student English Language Acquisition (SELA) record
Step 1: Navigate to State/Province-CA > Update ELA Status History screen.
- This is the most efficient way to locate the fields, and the least confusing since even English Only students must be given a status.
New Interface Path: Start Page > Select student > Compliance > ELA Status/Program History.
Step 2: Select New and enter ELA Status Code, ELA Start Date and Primary Language for a current ELA status.
- ELA Status End Dates are only used for statuses that are changing from one to another such as: TBD to EL or EL to RFEP.
- Students who are listed as English Only (EO) should rarely have an end date, but only an EO status, status start date and English as Primary Language.
- Students who are identified as TBD should be are required to be tested with the Initial ELPAC assessment within 30 days of enrollment.
- Students listed as TBD are either being tested with the ELPAC Initial Assessment, or staff are awaiting information from CALPADS SELA records to complete these fields following testing.
- When updating to a new status, the former status MUST have an end date as shown below.
The status WITHOUT an end date is considered the “Current ELA Status” therefore will populate onto the Student Information Page and will be what is extracted when running Quick Exports or by using the CALPADS English Language Acquisition (ELA) Fields functions found here: Special Functions > California Special Functions.
How to Mass Import New Student English Language Acquisition (SELA) record
Using the Data Import Manager (Special Functions > Importing and Exporting > Data Import Manager), you can import SELA records en masse to PowerSchool using the following core fields to create your new, open records:
- S_CA_STU_ELA_C.StudentsDCID
- Exported from PowerSchool
- S_CA_STU_ELA_C.PrimaryLanguage
- Note: Use 2 digit values
- S_CA_STU_ELA_C.ELAStatus
- Note: Trim Values if using a spreadsheet to export as a Tab Delimited Text File.
- S_CA_STU_ELA_C.ELAStatusStartDate
- Note: M/D/YY works fine
- S_CA_STU_ELA_C.StatusComment
- Optional, but could contain language such as “Per CALPADS” to let PS Admin users know that the status was located in CALPADS and not from the Home Language Survey (HLS).
How and When to Modify an Existing Record
Unless a student’s ELA Status changes, there is usually no need to modify the current record or provide an end date to the status.
However, records will need to be updated for both TBD and EL students once the student has been identified as either EL or IFEP for the TBD, or as Reclassified (RFEP) for English Learners.
To modify the record, simply select the ELA Status Code which opens the record and allows you to add or modify information. Update the Status End Date for the TBD or EL student, and select submit. Then add a new status as appropriate.
WARNING
PowerSchool has a known glitch in the Update ELA History screen. To avoid duplicate or erroneous records, select State/Province-CA screen (or any other screen from the menu on the left) before moving to the next student record.
How to Search for the ELA Statuses in PowerSchool
Option 1: Query or Quick Export
From the PS Start Page, the database extension to use in your search for ELA Statuses is: S_CA_STU_X.ELAStatus. For the Status Date it is: S_CA_STU_X.ELAStatusDate.
Option 2: ELA Status Search Function
To easily locate all EL students, as an example:
Step 1: Navigate to Special Functions > California Special Functions > CALPADS English Language Acquisition (ELA) Fields
New Interface: Start Page > People > Students > CALPADS English Language Acquisition (ELA) Fields – CA.
Step 2: Search or Filter for results you want.
- Example: All EL students OR all students whose primary language is Spanish.
Step 3: Apply Filters
Step 4: Your Results
The results may be used to “Make these Students Current Selection” so that you may do any number of things such as:
- Quick Export lists
- Export more detailed information from the DDE, like class lists from the CC Table, attendance table details, etc.
This function makes finding students or exporting information in a much more targeted way.
Using this feature can assist you in troubleshooting those with no status or no records.