Please stand by for realtime captions. 
>> Thank you for joining us today. We will get started in about five minutes. It looks like we are getting a good group of people. We will be recording this so it can be shared. We will get started just a couple minutes. In just a couple minutes.
>> Okay. It looks like we are at the top of the hour. I think we will get started this is Robbin Bull, DB Child Count Coordinator with  NCDB. I would like to welcome everyone. Thank you for coming today. I'm going to start off with a few housekeeping i.e. that I will hand it over to Sam Morgan . He will offer a few comments and then get in the into the main contact that I will be covering. Phones have been muted to reduce background noise. The question and answer session will occur at the end of the presentation. Please enter your questions into the chat pod as we go. We will monitor that as we go. I do have a lot of content to go through. We do want this to be a resource that can be referred back to. I put a lot of content in here. There are questions that we don't get to I am creating a fake you document. Those questions can go into that and get answer there as well. Please enter your comments. We also have an evaluation obviously at the end of this. There is room in there for comments as well or for feedback. So that is a place that you can also share your thoughts. We want to get going with that. This will be recorded and archived. I am going to hand it over to Sam now for some opening comments.
>> Thanks Robin. So when Robin was planning the webinar we were just chatting about some of the larger issues around child count she asked me to provide a little bit of contacts and some of the landscape of the larger things that are going on that we think you should be aware of as you are listening to this webinar today and thinking about the child count. So first of all, I think it is probably become apparent to many of you that we are taking more interest in the child count data. First of all it is obviously common measures that you are aware of limit. We have also gotten specific requests around clarification around specific child count questions they had. And they have been comparing that to the -- data. Most people are probably aware of why the Mac. [low volume]
>> I think regardless of whether OSEP is more involved in our data are not you want that dated to be as accurate as possible so it is really meaningful but also her really fry sauce internally so we have good data that we can use to inform and as we move in that direction. While NCDB and  Robin have been making every effort to support you we are asking the projects to really make certain efforts as you are looking at the data. I know that Robin has spoken to you -- to go over particular data issues that you may be having. You can certainly feel free to contact her around any issues that you may be having and reporting data. So just to look for it and think about the next year. We add NCDB and specifically Robin  we are going to look at and update of child count fields. That will be happening in the next year. It really is the time to your child count data as good as it can be as we transition into most likely having some new fields and maybe some changed ones as well. Robin will be reaching out to projects for you to participate in this. Make sure we get your opinion feedback. So that is it. I hope those comments are helpful. Robin, I will hand it over to you. Great. Thanks, Sam. Just a quick overview of what we will be covering today. We have some new folks. We have some experience folks. I know some people [indiscernible]. For some of this or some of you will be a review. We are going to go through collecting, reporting and using it. And some information about each of those to get an idea of what people's interests are in him. I'm going to do a quick poll question. If you are on the phone only, I'm asking about what information are you most interested in? Collecting, reporting, or using child count. Feel free to email me after the fact. And the others or provide feedback so we can also provide information the chat pod this is a multiple-choice and it looks like there is a lot of interest across all of the categories. So that is great. I'm just going to get rid of that. Thank you very much. So the outcomes for today is to really go over the collecting and reporting process for 2019 child count. We know that you want to have this information earlier in the year so you can get started with the process that you have. We really wanted to move that forward and I don't have those instructions available. I thought I would just wait until after the webinar to see if there was anything that came out today that I need to clarify a little bit more and then auctions. Early part of next week we will have all the materials available to you to grab off the website. We will go over strategies for improving accuracy and efficient and reporting and reporting. We don't want to make it cumbersome. We will get some tips on how to look at the data and how to make it more accurate. And strategies for using that data to guide decisions and as they have them mentioned we will briefly talk about the plan for changing the child count based on our needs as a field for what we want to collect and what is unnecessary as things have changed over the years. So we will go over that. Just a brief history of the child count. This will be our 33rd annual report. What we are collect thing collecting it does represent a snapshot count of September first. It would be a similar to the IDEA federal child count which a point in time snapshot count of children once a year as well. So we are collecting that. On the federal child count, children who are Deaf-Blind are only counted if it is their only disability.  So there is a lot of children that don't get categorized as Deaf-Blind. That is why we have account and we want to make sure our kids are counted and represented.  And provided services for them. So we are going to go over to collect thing. Again, why do we collect this information, we want to make sure we have current and accurate information to help design and deliver the TA that we have. Also, there are researchers that use information that comes from the child count and personnel prep programs using information. It is important that we have good comprehensive information as well as accurate information. I want to make sure they are available for the children and families. Just a brief timeline. The child count this year we are disseminating the materials. We did a little flip flop of getting that report and getting those materials out. Primarily because we wanted to get the materials out to you earlier in the year. The report will come later this month for intact over but probably due to the educational setting and cleaning that we are doing on the data. That will come a little bit later. December first is the snapshot date. This year for 2020 we have May fifth select dead as the date. That is just a shot in the dark. Just to reflect once the data comes in you go through a cleaning and barricade vacation verification process. We will have the report published. That gives an overview of that. Submission details. For those who are really new to this -- that includes instructions and even those of you who are seasoned and have done this for years and years it is really important to go through the instructions. As we all found out with the education setting, the changes that there are details that are in the instructions. We tried to put any new changes like it there is a big change for field in the what is new at the beginning and the instructions. But also there are some detailed instructions on or under each field that is helpful. I've included some additional details throughout. There are no new fields. The quick reference code is just a shortened version of that I am going to just quickly show for those who are not. Let's see. I am going to share my screen. And for those of you who aren't used to using all the tools in Microsoft word, this document usually comes in word. If somebody could tell me if you are seeing the word document, that would be great. Thank you Alyssa. This is a this is the instruction document. And with that as I mentioned you have a lot of the details in here. We tried to give you the details upfront so you can pay attention to them. As far as navigation goes if you have the navigation pane open in the left hand side you can quickly jump to any of the sections that you need to reference. I am on the left-hand side and there is a menu bar. You can easily get to the different fields that you need to. It is pretty easy to get through. I'm going to jump out to the sample spreadsheet that we provide. This is something that is we provide it to you for your convenience. It is something that is not necessary for you to use but you can use it to report your data.
>> I have taken of few rows but I have also -- does not separate file. You are walking welcome to include information when you submit. I have also including a data notes tab on here. If it is convenient for you to provide notes you are welcome to do that. You can also do that. When you submit your data in the form. There is a place there that is a way to provide information to me as well. I am going to get that. I am available to answer questions anytime. I know I am going through this really quickly please feel free to ask me any follow-up on phone or email. The important thing is I mentioned it is not required. It is there for your convenience. Your data can be collected in any program. The key thing is that is exported that informed that exile can read. It has to be a spreadsheet type of file that can be right. Rad. That can be rad. read. Just a reminder may fifth is the date it is due. If you need an extension you need to contact me before the date the date the data is due.. I have a link for the location where you can get to those. We updated next week. For those who are not signed up on the website for the national child count that would be a good thing to do because then you will get a notification that I have upload this information. Any future updates as well. That is there. And that is under our main navigation on our website. And there is an initiative tab and it is a drop-down and that has national child count. And from there you will see information about the resources for reporting that and that should walk you through it. Let's move on here. Checking for proper codes and missing data Sam said we are really trying to get the data cleaned up and accurate so there are a few things I just want to highlight here. As I mentioned to review all the traction and code sheet. I want to mention here when I talk about reviewing instructions and code sheets I don't just mean the national ones that we provide you but I also mean the one that you are sounding sending out to collect your information. I am finding that some where there is a disconnect on some of the information that you are sending out to what you are receiving in. And Ed setting is an example of that. Some of them had the education setting. In the database that they reused or the file that they use internally they weren't updated. And so that is where you want to double check that what you are using to report your data into us matches the information that you are sending out to projects or to [indiscernible]. I have highlighted here of the education setting that you will use the same codes as last year. And we will review that. That is a loaded statement there. We will go into that in detail. You also want to look at your or check the state assessment four and five are codes that were removed a couple years ago. I am still finding that those codes are coming and child count reports. So you want to check that and make sure that you are up to date on those changes. When exiting data. You want to keep the data for a child who has exited the Deaf-Blind services or  the for that last year. So say if an individual left part B services or the Deaf-Blind services and October  and you come to the September one account. You still want to include them. You don't want to make them an active and not include them in a report that was in May. Obviously then we lose that data. We don't get that. And we want to have that information. You want to keep them on your report for next year. So then we get that data and then you can remove them or what ever you do in your system. Keep that in mind. If you need to have more conversation about that, feel free to talk to me about that. I'm finding that there are several that do not have that field. So that should be in your report as well. So reporting iterations. Just checking my notes. Things that are really important for us to have is a vision loss and hearing loss information as needed. For us to have children on the child count. We definitely need to have that information. We really want to have that information so I am making sure that you get accurate codes for exiting on part C and part B as well as the project exiting information. Those are critical pieces of information that we need to have. That will make a difference on whether or not the children are included in the snapshot number that we have. We have a snapshot number that reflects those on the death line Deaf-Blind  -- so we match with that number. We also had that number that reflects re-services throughout the year. So for that reporting. For example for this 2000 19 cons we call it your reporting period is from December second 2018 to December first of 2019. Those kids receive services from your project through that period of time and then we had that snapshot of December first 2019. What that means is those children who come onto your account after that date should not be included in your December one 2019 report. So you need to have some mechanism in your database or somehow when you're going through her reporting to us that you are not including those children that come into your account after December one for whatever year you are reporting to. So if you need to take her talk further with me about that we can talk about that. I am just talk about exiting data it is important to receive that information. And just mentioning the code of 999 and any numeric field for any and unknown data. That is really helpful so that we know it is just unknown or that you know it is missing versus that it is not something that was a technical error or that dado was not exported safely. There are some situations where some data may not get exported from the database and self file. And that is some things that may be just be a technical thing. If you have an 999 then we know that it is intentionally something that you are aware of that is unknown or missing data. Just mentioning here that only numeric data is accepted for all fields. Except for the state code and those can have offices in them also is in them. Alphas in them.
>> Do not include data notes within your report datasheet. For example an Excel where you have or you can have multiple sheets for example as I showed you on the sample sheet on the datasheet where you report your child count. There should not be any tax notes and that. There could be another sheet tab that has data notes and it or you can provide a separate file with any data notes or some other way to provide notes. And just a reminder here to contact me before the submission date. So the Ed setting. We talked about this. Most of us have talked about it. Probably quite a bit. New codes versus old codes. So this bar when I referred to new codes it is a little bit misleading. We are not using them for 2019. I refer to them as new codes because they were introduced in 2017 instructions. Without a lot of detail to the projects and they were included in the 2018 instructions. This is where we have had conversations that a large number of states were using the old codes and so that is what we are using to report for this 2018 reports and what we will use for the 2019 report. If you are using the new codes we are cross walking your codes into the old codes. We will talk a little bit more about that in the next couple slides. I just want to make sure that is clearly dated that new codes are not what we are using. Old codes are what we are using. And we stuck with this old code because we knew that we would make some changes in the 2020s child count. And we did not want to make a change now and then make another change in 2020 with some other things. We are just going to integrate the change into 20s 20 account and we will get it all cleaned up at that point in time. It will be a little bit rocky for two years and that we will get it cleaned up. The Ed setting field is a little tricky here. This is where cause some problems for us. I'm just going to offer up a few cautions. The Ed setting field has two different age categories. They have different codes but they go into the same field. And you must be aware of the child's age in order to make sure that you are getting the correct code. And so the early childhood and special education codes from 3 to 5 are little bit different from 6 to 21. This is where we got into a problem with the changes because the changes were from 3 to 5 because of the numeric changes happening and in fact did it affected 6 to 21. So what problems had occurred or could occur there is that the data can be incorrect due to the age being out of range. So you might have 3 to 5 eighths codes for somebody who is eight for example. Because their data has not been updated. More and may be that somebody of dated that 3 to 5 code in the data system but not the 6 to 21 codes. So there is some mixup of what the codes may mean and there is a little bit of cross over what they may mean. Or as I mentioned before, the forms that you send out may have been updated or not updated but the database has been updated. Is a little bit tricky. I think we worked through a lot of the issues that made a lot of notes. But I have it in the next slide. I will mention it now. We are going to have that when you submit child count next year. We will also have you submit what codes you are using just to be sure that we know if you are using the old codes or the new codes. As I mentioned we will report on those old codes. Some people have already updated to the new fields. We will crosswalk again back to the old codes. They wanted just make sure that we are knowing what codes people are using and so that we would get a good merge of data to be able to use and we would like to do this because if our data is mixed up and separated and we cannot use longitudinal data so we want to keep our data going across here. We are trying to keep it consistent. So I just provided here the old codes. I mentioned that they would be used on the 2019 report. They are just listed here. For reference including here the new codes and those are only used that they were used for the 2018 report and again we will crosswalk close back to the old codes when they are reported. I had sent this out in an email before when we were talking about that setting. It is the same here. When you reported this child count if you use that old count of 2019, you should not make up days your codes. You should continue using the codes that you have used in the past. And in the instructions they will have the old codes still. I have reverted that back to old codes. If you update to the new codes for all the kids then you will also not make any changes. He will continue to use the new codes. I don't want you to have to make changes to the system now. We will work on the backend when you report your data to crosswalk those into old codes. Just as we did this year, if you have mixed data or think that you might have mixed data we can work and looking at that or ways to look at how them data might be and how we can look at cross liking that. There are some ways that are fairly easy to spot if the data is old or new. So we can do that. This year I am going to provide data notes for your file. Those will be coming out in the next month. Things that I have spotted on your data to help you update your file on your on so you are not continuing to have data errors is used on that data in. As I go along with your file I make notes of things for you to check. They may be things that are issues. They may not be issues. A lot of you I talked to about some of these things. Others may just be other things you want to check. I will send this to you. Okay. Ways to look at your data for accuracy. One way to do this is to look at the report. Want to do this easily is to look at the national report and see if there is no lot of unknown or missing data. There are a lot of things that can happen with the data from entry to your entry system or database system to exporting that data into that file that you are sending to us as well is our interpretation or manipulation of your data. It is always a good idea to take a look at your data closely and see if there is a lot of unknown or missing data and did you expect that. Some situations you may not be able to get to that information. So you might not have information. There might be some attack likely something happened and we want to address that and see if we can't fix that. So looking for that is a way to look and spot those. Data not exported is the state file you can look at that and see if there is some data that is completely missing or if there is minimal data missing. That is also something you can look at your numbers. On our national report and just going to go over there and share my screen again. So much to cover. There's so much I want you now. You can filter the report by your own state if you don't know that. It is up in the right-hand corner. You can look at your data just by your own state if you want so that you don't have to look at all states. If you have all the states and is difficult to look at your own data you can filter it via just your own state and that makes it easier to look at. But you can also export your file and that makes it easy to do some reports on some charts on your data as well. It has all the data tables that we give you this is an easy way to make graphs and charts if you want to for doing a presentation for example. I am just going to do an example of this is how quick it is to do that. A pie chart. And right there that quick I have a charge of the hearing impairment for my kids and I can use that to build a presentation. So that is a really nice feature that is there I wanted to show you that. That is jumping ahead on some of the tools that are available for you. If it is helpful for you also on those sects and files you are able to look at your data in different ways once you have it downloaded for yourself. Looking at your data that is coded for your correct age for example in part B and C you can sort your data by age and then look at part B and C codes to make sure they are appropriate for the age so child is. The numeric codes when looking to make sure there are only numeric codes and one code any each cell. So if you put that and then you pull in or into your Excel file you can sort it by your child could and then you can seek changes across years. This is an easy way to see if there is further test they needed. Or if it has been changed or updated. As well as for if you have kids newly identified kids and kids that have been removed. I am going to jump here to the newly identified piece. This is one of the things that you can do with sorting data. If you don't have another mechanism to easily identify which kids are newly identified for some of those who have smaller systems you know your kids so easily is really not an issue. For some who have bigger child counts this is an issue. We went to make sure you under and that this is really a simple formula. We think some people might have a different formula and we want to make sure you have the most updated copy. I have a link here on this document and you want to make sure that that what you have is dated in April of 2019. And really it is taking the number of those children and dividing it under that child account. And then of course times it by 100. So that is what you need to do. And ways you can determine that is have a field in your database if you don't already. And also you can store it your spreadsheet files so that kind of pulls out new kids if you are sorting by year and by child code number. It will kind of pull out those kids that are new for that are for this year. So I can help you with that if you need help with that. I am going to continue on. I think Julie is helping out with that. Okay. Just different ways that you can look at your data you can look at it from the length of a child. Who are the children, looking yeah that from other disabilities. OSEP has been looking at our data from different perspective  this too. So this is something that we do here as well as I would think that your state level that you have been doing and we are trying to provide tools for you to be looking at your data. Service looking for the length of that where are they being served and longitudinally what trends or what are the trends telling us about that. I have another poll that I will pull up really quickly. Do you regularly look at your data and then longitudinally and then other. If you look at any of these areas. His evaluation that you would like help or if you have more suggestions. We would be happy to know that. So then we can provide more tools to help you in these different areas. If you have any good ideas that you want to put if you are doing some of this that you want to share with your colleagues that is always a good idea as well. So I am going to close this. Thank you so much this is help to know. There is a lot in looking at the trial data. Want to know more about the categories. I am not able to put or give a description I would love to hear more about that if you want to share more about that. I am going to continue on. So much I have dialogue about. I don't want to miss his information. So tools that we have available for you to look at that data. We have the on late report and I demonstrated to you how you could look at your state data and the charts. Interactive online maps are a quick way to look at your child count data and there are nice draft owns or longitudinal graphs that are on those. I'm not sure people are aware of those as well is tables that show percentages that are handy. So those are something to definitely take a look at and they can find something useful for presentations as well. They are available for you to look at across time. They have all of your state data. It is a state or a tab for every state where hearing loss and vision loss as well as the national numbers. And then the self assessment guide is something you may not use it for but referral to go through the whole thing. But you can download that and it will pre-populate your data into the cables and that gives a five-year look at some of these different categories that are noted here. And he is or that is a good thing to use as well. I do have a document that talks a little bit more about using these holes tools. There is a link that gives more help on that. I am happy to help you with that as well. I'm just going to throw up one more thing here. Just wondering if you have used it to have a data tools. This is helpful information to know what you are using. We do want to know what would be helpful to you and that is also what we are trying to find out. If you haven't used these and see you take a look and you find that they could be useful to you in the different format. Please let us know that would be great. RA. That would be very good. Thank you so much. People use the reports. That is great. I'm glad some people are looking at those. And so I am just going to mention that we are doing a needs assessment work group. For the Deaf-Blind child count. This is what Sam mentioned that we will look at  the child count forums and what we are collecting that is useful and what is necessary and what is desired. And we are going to be convening starting in October, hopefully. I would like to have a small group of people who are interested did am working less and then taking the information and presented to the field to give feedback on. And then we will work on this and come up with some changes. So if you are interested please let me know. You can put your information in there and you can email me. I have already talked with a few people but if you are interested let me know. We will start getting information out about that. Real soon about that. I am here to help. Feel free to contact me. I will get to that evaluation link here. And as I said there is the place to provide information on hopes that you might need or feedback or what might be useful or things that are not useful. Or things that you are can use on. Please provide that information and like I said this presentation was fast and furious with a lot of information. It is really designed to be a reference to go back or to share with people in your office then people and there is information that will help you help guide you through the process for doing the child count. And there are resources on the web as well. So. There are a few minutes left. I was not able to keep up with that chat pod. There is a lot of stores stuff there that I was not able to -- where have things been answered. It is about identifying kids --. The question is can be they be on the child count. My initial reaction is yes. That is how the state regulations and therefore they can be on that. I think Robin is netted nodding her head yes. They can. If you have that information they will be included. And same thing for hearing. Yes. That was the gist. If there are other questions if people want to type those in. We will address those. Like I said we will include this information in the FAQ that we will that will be going out as well. And I would like to also encourage you to use the forum on the national for some questions that might come up that are similar to this. And how's the new people to be able to see what experience people have gone through if you respond. There is a great post with or on parental consent. I go back to that and I share it with other people. That is so useful to have those for people to look at and see what other people are doing. I get questions that I interact with people via email. It would be nice for other people to see those responses and questions as well. There is one question in there from Brian. Do we have any specifics regarding the 2020 count?
>> We don't have any specifics yet. I'm sorry about that. It will be an open forum.
If anybody has a question on the phone please remind me of that. Please unmute your phone. Pound six. Sam is mentioning he will post that trance of OSEP  letter and the child count group. Great. Thank you, Sam. Wonderful. Thank you all for all your hard work. I know there is a lot that goes into collecting this information and reporting it. We try to make it as easy as we can but there are some things we need help on the get this cleaned up. We can have some good data going forward as well. This is a good thing for the next couple years getting that data cleaned up and organize for some new collections as we look at 2020. So we appreciate that. Inks, Tracy. I appreciate you all. I rate. Looks like I got through it all. I hope the captioner.. Capped up. Thank you for coming we appreciate it. We will go through the chat pod and pull out anything that needs to be included and provide that information with the resources we will get that online and archives. We think we thank you and have a good week. We have an archived link for the webinar. Do you have that handy, Haylee? We have all of those on our website. Haylee has it posted there we have an event and training link and there is a webinar dropped on that has archives ones as well and you can find all of our upcoming webinars and pass webinars as well. That way you can find your way to get into the materials. All right. Thank you so much everyone.
>> [Event concluded]