By default, the Education Data Warehouse allows schools and districts to access MCAS records for tests they administered only. The student claiming process enables schools and districts to access to ALL historical MCAS data for their enrolled students, regardless of where the test was taken. For additional information about the value of student claiming, please read my previous blog post entitled, "Student Claiming: A Good Idea."
The folks at DESE will be re-setting the student claiming fields on Friday, July 15, 2011. Starting next week (July 18th), once you have "rolled over" your student information system to the 2011-2012 school year, you may upload a "claiming file" of all currently registered/enrolled students. Once you have successfully uploaded and accepted the data you will then be able to access MCAS and SIMS history for all students registered to be in your schools this September.
Please note that for those districts currently using SIF for claiming, this process should happen automatically. For further information, please contact your ESE SIF representative.
If you've haven't previously claimed students in the Data Warehouse, this summer (after July 18th) would be a good time to do so! Additional information on the student claiming process can be found at the end of Chapter 3: Basic Access of the EDW User Guide.
