Getting Core Data Right: A Start Guide for MO Charter Schools
At EdOps, we recently hosted a lab for Missouri charter schools to "Strengthen Your Core Data Expertise," and a key takeaway was clear: school data is far more than just numbers in a spreadsheet. It's a dynamic, year-long narrative about your students, your staff, and your school's daily operations. Getting this narrative right is crucial for accountability and revenue, and it requires collaboration across your entire organization.
What is Core Data, Really?
Core Data is the state of Missouri's method for tracking what schools are doing. It’s a collection of information, mostly stored in your school’s Student Information System (SIS) – like PowerSchool or Infinite Campus – that touches on nearly every aspect of your operations. The process consists of two main parts:
Core Data Screens: These are summaries and reports that often require manual data entry for things like your school calendar or district contacts.
MOSIS Uploads: These are files exported from your SIS containing detailed student and educator information. These files must be uploaded and validated to fix errors before they can be certified by someone at your school.
These files form an intricate web of data that must be coordinated to ensure everything lines up. Making sure each individual component is correct, and all components are correct in their connections to each other, is a critical component of accountability and revenue.
June Core Starts in August:
Because data touches so many areas, it requires constant attention from different departments. A single student’s journey or an educator’s career progression creates a cascade of data points that must be captured accurately. This data is collected throughout the year, with the biggest cycle occurring in June. To be ready, we need to be collecting, cleaning, and auditing data from Day 1 to ensure smooth, accurate submissions.
Each Student, from enrollment to withdrawal, generates a massive amount of data. This includes demographics, course schedules, attendance, grades, and discipline records. A simple schedule change mid-semester or a discipline incident has a direct impact on data files that may not be due for months. These seemingly small events affect multiple data sets, like the Student Core, Student Discipline, and Course Completion files.
Each Educator is a core part of the data story. When a teacher is hired, earns a new degree, or changes roles, it must be reported. Details about their qualifications, job responsibilities, salary, and how they spend every minute of their day are tracked across several "partner files," such as the Educator Core, Educator School, and Course Assignment files, which must be uploaded together.
Proactivity is Key:
As you can see, what happens in the classroom, the HR office, and the principal's office directly impacts core data. A change made in October can easily create an error in a June submission if it isn't tracked properly. That’s why proactive data collection, efficient storage, and thorough auditing are best practices. Waiting until a submission deadline to discover an error from months ago can create significant headaches. Maintaining clean data in your SIS and regularly checking key files are essential for a smooth reporting process.
Navigating this intricate process is a major undertaking for any charter school. It requires deep institutional knowledge and dedicated time that school leaders often don't have. This is where a specialized partner can be invaluable. At EdOps, our team of data specialists supports schools in managing the full MO Core Data cycle, ensuring data integrity so that school leaders can focus on what they do best: supporting student achievement.
[Contributed by the MO Data Team]