Here are three ways to enter/maintain leading zeros in Excel:

If you haven't entered the data yet, you can format the entire column as text (Select the column, then Format > Cells > Select "Number" tab, then under "Category," select "Text"). Ignore the "Number stored as text" warning that Excel puts on the cell.

You can also enter or fix items with leading zeros one at a time by putting an apostrophe in front of the item. (This is another way to store digits as text.)

Before or after entering data, you can format the whole column to fill in the leading zeros. For example, for public school STNs (which have must have nine digits), select the column, then Format > Cells > Select "Number" tab, then under "Category," select "Custom" and a box labeled "Type" will appear; enter nine zeros there: 000000000. (For a three-character numbers such as Field 10 "Service Site" in the DOE-SE, you would enter three zeros: 000.)

NOTE: Opening a comma-delimited file (CSV) in Excel is usually not a good idea: If you open a CSV file in Excel, it will automatically remove leading zeros from your numbers (including STN, social security numbers, dates, and grades). If there are problems in your CSV data file that you need to correct, either go back to your original Excel data file or open your file in Word or Notepad. (You may need to save the file from Word or Notepad as TXT, but that extension won't be a problem - you can still submit as comma delimited.

The final field in the DOE-ISTEPBAR data layout is Language Minority Status (field 17). There are one or two issues you should be aware of related to this field:

Issue 1
Please review the Data Layout instructions for this field carefully. The options listed are (1) Fluent/FEP and (2) Limited/LEP; note, however, that these apply only to students who have been identified as Language Minority (LM) students. For most students (i.e., non-LM students), this field will be blank.

Issue 2 (only if you are preparing your DOE-ISTEPBAR file in Excel)
Because the Language Minority field is the final item in each record and in most instances will be left intentionally blank, there is a high likelihood of problems in converting your Excel file to the comma-delimited (CSV) file format. Excel often experiences difficulty knowing how many commas to put in each row when the cell at the end is empty. This can result in the error message, File line [#] does not contain the correct number of data elements.” (A “data element” is the same as a cell in a spreadsheet.)

The simplest solution to this problem is to put an apostrophe (') - also know as a single quotation mark - in any cell in the last column (The "LM" column) that is intentionally left blank. (Tip: If the records with blank LM fields are all grouped together, you can put one apostrophe in the first row and copy it down.) This will tell Excel to fill in the comma to indicate a blank item at the end. (Note that you will not be able to see the apostrophe in the worksheet but if you go to the cell, you can see it in the formula editing bar.)

On my school's homepage that records Data Submission - Records Submitted -Days Until Due, everything was up to day and showing ok.  Suddenly the Programs & Services collection year 2006, Period 1 says "Most Recent Files Has Errors" I haven't sent anything in a long time - don't know why this popped up.  I'm not able to find anything to tell me why this error message is showing up. 

This is a correct error message but was not showing on your scoreboard properly. If you check the results of the file transfer for the last file submitted for PS period 1, you will see it does have failed records. It was submitted on the 26 along with other files for the same collection and period but processed on the 28th of October. It was processed by the STN team, because of an error that needed our attention. When posting information to the scoreboard we were looking at the created date instead of the processed date. We have just made the correction to the scoreboard in January.

Our schools offer an after-school, voluntary Gifted and Talented program.  Do I need to report students that volunteer to attend this after-school program in the second phase of the PS report?

Schools should only count the students that go through their formal identification process and are found eligible to participate in their g/t programming. 

This year the Doe-Dc, version 05.13.05, requires a STN for each student. I believe you guys have suggested in the past that we should not assign a STN number to a new student to Indiana Schools because the student may no show up at the beginning of school. I have told our staff this on several occasions. This report, as it now stands, will force us to assign new STN numbers to future students. Is the STN number necessary for this report? If you could, please respond quickly to this question. School ends on June 3rd. I will have to instruct our staff, before they leave for the year, to assign new numbers to our future kindergarten students or any other new student to Indiana that is scheduled to attend our corporation next year.

By now all students in Indiana have an assigned STN number. An STN Lookup for students that pre-register should still be performed. You can locally assign an stn to a student, but you do not have to report this to the application center during the summer months when you will be submitting data for direct certification, we prefer that you report the stn numbers when the student enrolls in the fall or really does showup in the fall. The use of the STN number on the DOE-DC will enable continuous uploads and matches of students to the direct cert file. This was not possible in previous years. You may receive a warning that the STN does not exist in the application center, but the record will continue to process.

In reviewing the DOE-AT instructions, you indicate we must complete the Certificate of Instructions Days form before we can submit data. I have these questions.

1. Will we be able to do the testing on June 1 without submitting the form. I think we were able to do this last year. Our school year is not completed till the end of the first week of June and so we can not complete the form until then. This would mean we could not do any testing.

Yes you will be able to submit data. You will get an warning that your data was accepted but not complete until the CID is completed.

2. The instructions give a web site (see below) to go to get the form but when I go there, it says we must have the form turned in by June 15, 2004. This is last years form so when will the new form be available. Yes, that is last years form, this is where the form for 2004-2005 will be available.

What are the submission dates for the 2004-2005 Attendance Report?

Those dates are:

6/01/05 – 6/10/05 for AT trial submission, which will test for a successful file format and transfer
6/13/05 – 7/01/05 for Actual AT data submission

Please note that the following must be completed prior to submitting AT data:

1. Certification of Instructional Days, and
2. a current record in the DOE-PS for each student.

See the Attendance Report (DOE-AT) Data Layout on the STN site for more information.

Almost all of my STNs have leading zeros which Excel wants to drop, so I add them back on this way:

• right-click on the column heading and choose Format Cells
• on the Number tab, in the Category section, choose Custom (at the bottom)
• in the Type section to the right, enter 000000000 (9 zeros) to force 9 digits in your number
• click okay and Excel adds leading zeros as needed to make 9 digits

You can do the same thing to your School column to force 4 digits (enter 0000) if your schools have leading zeros.

You can also do this with the Birthdate column, entering mm/dd/yyyy for the Custom Type to make the dates look right.

1). When doing a lookup, you can click on the attendance tab to view what attendance data has been sent for that student as well as Pupil Enrollment and other tabs.

2). When a school number or school name is in blue, click on the number or name to get contact information.

I need to know how students attending alternative school should be listed in enrollment history.

Is there a way that you can keep our report submitted during the trial period if it is OK? The person responsible for submitting the report will be gone for the summer after that.

Yes, please fax on letterhead to the STN Team at 317-233-6326, a request to keep the attendance data submitted during the trial period. You must copy and paste the Summary of Results section from the file transfer page. If the file transfer results in any errors the file will not be accepted for reprocessing. Please note, that if you have not submitted the Instructional Days, you will receive an error. An error free file transfer does not mean that the Attendance data is complete. The data for all schools will not be complete until the end of July.

The collection period allows schools with summer schedules and expanded school year to submit their current data. There will be a period for AT cleanup where dates of attendance at multiple schools overlap each other. Data sent on June 1 could interfere with data sent on June 30 and vice versa. This data will have to be corrected throughout the collection period and thereafter until the AT data for 2004-2005 is final. This will be the same process we recently completed, which required the correction of attendance data for students having more than 185 days of attendance and the missing attendance data for students submitted on the pupil enrollment report.

The submission of data and the accuracy of the data will be closely monitored. We will start contacting schools by email and phone by mid July. Please designate a primary and secondary contact for the Attendance collection on the Central Point of contact at http://www.doe.in.gov/htmls/doe_cpoc.html.

The vendors of which the department is aware are listed at: www.doe.in.gov/stn/stnsis.html

We anticipate that all vendors will work hard to meet the expectations of the STNs project. As they report progress toward meeting critical objectives, it will be noted. We are particularly concerned with 1) vendors’ ability to accommodate the STNs as a part of their data bases; 2) vendors’ ability to report student data for ISTEP+ that will be the basis for the generation of test labels by the ISTEP+ contractor; ; and 3) vendors’ overall ability to communicate using XML methodologies. Progress in these three areas will be reported at the above address.

What is your expectation of small schools that are not currently involved with a comprehensive student information electronic system?