Risk Indicators

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 or you can pick a group of students and 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 discipline incidents in the last 6 months, filtered by course type or discipline incident type such as violence, drugs, 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 that 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 that 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 that are appropriate for the risk indicator.  We do suggest checking the box for “Is Secure” , this will ensure that the risk details honor a users permissions.

When selecting a student group use the  option student filtering instances. By using the filtering instances it allows 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. There are multiple data points that are necessary to build this risk indicator. Use the plus button to add data points and use 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 would like 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 will need to change the category label by 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, as this is 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%), High Risk (<90%). You can use the table to name and label each of the levels, 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. If you look at the image below, you will see a table with low, medium and high risk, the associated thresholds and other details.

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

In this example, there is not a 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 as credits should be obtained the risk will change. Ninth grades 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, first go back to the details tab and click the reload risk indicator button. Then, you can go to the students section and select a student group. Select  load preview. You should then see a table of previewed data with different data points that you previously determined. If you make additional changes, you will want to return to the details tab and click the reload risk indicator button. Then, you will be able to see a new preview reflecting your changes.

Creating a Risk Index

Once you have created a few indicators, you can then create a Risk Index of multiple indicator instances. Indicators can then 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 are purely informational and not weighted.

Use the ‘Create New Risk Indicator’ button on the left hand side to also create an Index.  Use the Details tab to fill in critical information.

• Name of the Risk Index
• Description of the Risk Index: What information that 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, then you would want to set the update schedule on the index to  11 AM.  This will avoid the possibility of the index 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. The index below has 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 would like 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 be ‘Leveling Numerical Equivalent”.  Save the data point. Once you have saved, you will need to change the category label by 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 would like 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 to be ‘2 decimal places’. Change the Indicator Value Contributions for the Indicator Basis and the Risk Basis to be ‘Leveling Numerical Equivalent”. Save the data point. Once you have saved, you will need to change the category label by 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 would like 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 to be ‘2 decimal places’. Change the Indicator Value Contributions for the Indicator Basis and the Risk Basis to be ‘Leveling Numerical Equivalent”. Save the data point. Once you have saved, you will need to change the category label by 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. 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 having these indicators or indices activated, 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.

If you are building your own risk index, we will provide a spreadsheet and instructions . 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 that an indicator you created is not working correctly, or not displaying on the dashboard; please contact us at support@schooldata.net. If you would like assistance building a risk indicator or index, please contact our support team. 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.