Student Risk Indicators

To view student risk, you can select one indicator and one student group to see where they appear on the threshold of student risk. You can also pick a group of students, select a succession of risk indicators, and view the detail in each column.

For each data point, the district can establish thresholds for an unlimited number of levels of risk, and each risk indicator can incorporate more than one data point.

Simple Configuration of Risk Levels

A risk indicator could include the number of unexcused absences in the last 90 days and the number of discipline incidents in the last six (6) months, filtered by course type or discipline incident type, such as violence, drugs, and weapons. So the multiple fields can be combined into a single risk indicator, and each risk indicator has those levels of risk.

Risk Indicator examples include:

• Absences
• Disciplines
• Number of classes with Ds and Fs as the final grade
• Credits being lower than expected
• Current Fs in a grade book or missing assignments
• Being on a program (Free/reduced lunch, Special Ed)
• Being of certain ethnicities

Creating a Risk Indicator

Use the Create New Risk Indicator button on the left-hand menu.  Use the Details tab to fill in critical information: 

• Name of the Risk Indicator
• Description of the Risk Indicator: What information will display when a user hovers over the category? Usually, this will explain the thresholds that define Low, Medium, and High-Risk categories. This description must be written in HTML code. If you need assistance, please reach out to the support team.

Example Attendance Rate:

<p>Students are flagged with<br />Low Risk &gt;= 95% attendance rate for current school year<br />Medium Risk &gt;= 90% to &lt;95% attendance rate for current school year<br />High Risk &lt; 90% attendance rate for current school year</p>

• Select a schedule: Weekly, monthly, daily, or specific dates. The schedule is determined by how often the data point is obtained from the SIS. For example, attendance data is reported daily from the SIS to School Data Solutions. We like to suggest Daily at 11 AM. That gives our systems time to update after obtaining information from the previous day. 

• Permission and accessibility
• Student Group Filtering Instances

Next, check the four checkboxes about permissions and accessibility appropriate for the risk indicator.  We do suggest checking the box for “Is Secure.” This will ensure that the risk details honor a user's permissions. 

When selecting a student group, use the options for student filtering instances. The filtering instances allow the student group parameters to stay in place from year to year without making edits. 

Save and continue to the data points section of the Risk Indicator. For this example, we will use our SDS default Average Yearly Attendance risk for an elementary student. Multiple data points are necessary to build this risk indicator. Use the plus button to add data points and the actions button to configure or style the data points. 

• Student Name: Use the actions button and configure to select the student name format you desire
• Enrollments: Current Predominant School
• Enrollments: Current Grade Level
• Risk Value: Use the actions button and configure to Confirm that the leveling color is set at ‘Use Color For Text’ and that the Data Format is set to ‘Percent with 2 Decimal Places’. 
• Risk Level
• Behaviors- Average Yearly Attendance: Use the actions button and configure to select the  Average Yearly Attendance (or select an attendance rate that better fits your needs).  Use the Styles button next to the rate you selected, and the pop-up window will give you some formatting options. Use the implicit leveling and leveling colors if you want the text to be color-coordinated with the level of risk (Typically, we use color for text). Because this data point is a percentage, we will want to select the data format to be ‘percent w/2 decimal places’. Change the Indicator Value Contributions for the Indicator Basis and the Risk Basis to be ‘Value”.  Save the data point. Once you have saved, you must change the category label using the styles option. Change the label to reflect the behavior by name; this must be done to save your category label. 

Next, go to the Default Risk Levels Section, where you will create the different thresholds that make up the different levels of risk. 

For the Average Yearly Attendance Rate, SDS has set specific thresholds to show Low Risk (>95%), Medium Risk (90-95%), and High Risk (<90%). You can use the table to name and label each level and choose the color to represent that level of risk. You will also indicate a minimum, maximum and numerical equivalent. Lastly, select if that level indicates risk. For example, in the image below, you will see a table with low, medium, and high risk, the associated threshold, and other details. 

Depending on the risk indicator, it may require more levels. You can add those levels by using the plus sign on the right side of each risk level. 

In this example, there is no need for conditional risk levels. An example of conditional risk levels may be for credits at the high school. Ninth graders may not have any credits in the Fall of Freshman year, but the risk will change as credits should be obtained. For example, ninth graders who have no credits or are credit deficient by the Spring of that year would be reflected as high risk for credits. 

To test your indicator, return to the details tab and click the reload risk indicator button. Then, you can go to the student's section and select a student group. Select load preview. You should then see a table of previewed data with the previously determined data points. If you make additional changes, you will want to return to the details tab and click the reload risk indicator button. Then, you can see a new preview reflecting your changes.

Creating a Risk Index

Once you have created a few indicators, you can create a Risk Index of multiple indicator instances. Indicators can be weighted differently to have a greater or lesser impact on the student’s overall risk. Data points can also be added to the Risk Index that is purely informational and not weighted. 

Create an Index using the ‘Create New Risk Indicator’ button on the left side. Then, use the Details tab to fill in critical information. 

• Name of the Risk Index
• Description of the Risk Index: What information will display when a user hovers over each category? Usually, this will explain the thresholds that define Low, Medium, and High Risk for the category. This description must be written in HTML code along with the code for the table. Please reach out to the support team for a programmer to be able to add this code, weighting, and activation. 
• Select a schedule: weekly, monthly, daily, or specific dates. The schedule is determined by how often the data point is obtained from the SIS. For example, using the Attendance Rate as an underlying indicator,  the Attendance Rate indicator is set to update daily at 9:30 AM. Therefore, you would want to set the update schedule on the index to  11 AM.  This will prevent the index from updating using old Attendance Rate data.

Save and continue to the data points section of the Risk Indicator.

Use the plus button to add the risk indicators that need to be included in the index, and use the action buttons to configure or style the data points. For example, the index below has three ( 3) attendance-related indicators. 

• Student Name: Use the actions button and configure to select the student name format you desire
• Enrollments: Current Predominant School
• Enrollments: Current Grade Level
• Risk Value: Use the actions button and configure to confirm that the leveling color is set at ‘Use Color For Text’ and that the Data Format is set to ‘Percent with 2 Decimal Places’.  Also, check the “Is Column is active” and “Use Implicit Leveling” checkboxes. 
• Risk Level
• Go to Data Points and Add Student Risk Indicator to see the list of indicators that have been created. 
• Behaviors- Average Yearly Attendance: Use the actions button and configure to select the Average Yearly Attendance (or select an attendance rate that better fits your needs).  Use the implicit leveling and leveling colors if you want the test to be color-coordinated with the level of risk (typically, we use color for text). Because this data point is a percentage, we will want to select the data format to be ‘percent w/2 decimal places’. Change the Indicator Value Contributions for the Indicator Basis and the Risk Basis to Leveling Numerical Equivalent”.  Save the data point. Once you have saved, you must change the category label using the styles option. Change the label to reflect the behavior by name. This must be done to save your category label. 
• Go to Data Points and Add New  Student Risk Indicator 
• Behaviors- Days Absent- Current Year: Use the actions button and configure to select the Days Absent (or select an attendance rate that better fits your needs). Use the implicit leveling and leveling colors if you want the test to be color-coordinated with the level of risk (typically, we use color for text). Because this data point is days, we will want to select the data format as ‘2 decimal places’. Change the Indicator Value Contributions for the Indicator Basis and the Risk Basis to Leveling Numerical Equivalent”. Save the data point. Once you have saved, you must change the category label using the styles option. Change the label to reflect the behavior by name. This must be done to save your category label.
• Go to Data Points and Add New Student Risk Indicator 
• Behaviors- Days Absent- Past 30 Days: Use the actions button and configure to select the Days Absent- Past 30 Days (or select an attendance rate that better fits your needs).  Use the implicit leveling and leveling colors if you want the test to be color-coordinated with the level of risk (typically, we use color for text). Because this data point is days, we will want to select the data format as ‘2 decimal places’. Change the Indicator Value Contributions for the Indicator Basis and the Risk Basis to Leveling Numerical Equivalent”. Save the data point. Once you have saved, you must change the category label using the styles option. Change the label to reflect the behavior by name. This must be done to save your category label.

Weighting a Risk Index

SDS typically makes all of the indicator instances weighted equally throughout the index. However, if desired, a district could make one or more indicators more or less weighted when contributing to risk. For example, some districts may have a district index for an attendance initiative, and the attendance is weighted to be 50% of the risk value. When activating these indicators or indices, you will want to include your district’s weighting preferences. Or, if desired, we can share a formatted spreadsheet that allows you to create the weighted multiplier rate for each risk category. Please contact the support team for more information.

We will provide a spreadsheet and instructions if you are building your own risk index. The spreadsheet is preformatted with formulas that work with the application and will produce the weighting multiplier numbers that the table will need to be configured correctly. 

If you find an indicator you created not working correctly or not displaying on the dashboard, please contact us at support@schooldata.net. Please contact our support team if you would like assistance building a risk indicator or index. We are happy to create or finalize risk indicators. If you are attempting to create an Index, please contact the support team for the description coding, weighting, and activation to be passed on to the development team.