ADMINISTRATIVE

The Report of Combined Term (Regular and Summer School) 
Graduates for the 1998-99 school year must be completed for 
all secondary schools in your school division and returned 
to the Department of Education no later than Friday, 
September 3, 1999.

In addition to the degree, plan, no award, and International 
Baccalaureate (IB) diploma information that school divisions 
have been reporting for graduates each year, we are 
requesting a breakdown by degree of the graduates who were 
vocational completers.   Information regarding graduates 
with disabilities is collected by the special education 
office and is no longer required for the graduate report.

A custom designed graduate spreadsheet can be downloaded 
from the Department of Education's website at 
http://www.pen.k12.va.us by selecting "Data and 
Publications" and then selecting "Collection of Combined 
(Regular and Summer) Term Graduates 1998-99."  The complete 
address is 
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/VDOE/Publications/grads/datacoll/co
ll.htm to access the graduate spreadsheet.  The graduate 
report can be completed using either Excel 5.0 or Excel 97. 
An instructional video on completing the Excel spreadsheet 
is being developed and will be made available upon request 
by calling (804) 225-2099.  

File layouts are enclosed for those school divisions that 
prefer to submit the graduate data as an ASCII flat file.  
We strongly urge school divisions to submit their graduate 
reports electronically.  If your school division is unable 
to submit the graduate report as an Excel or ASCII file, 
please have the graduate report contact person write or fax 
the Data Administration office to request paper forms.

Information on the contact person for the 1998-1999 graduate 
report is required.  In the Excel spreadsheet, contact 
information is requested on the first worksheet.  For those 
submitting an ASCII flat file, contact information is 
requested on the header record.  The contact information 
requested for graduate reporting will no longer be included 
on the school administration data collection in July 1999.

To avoid duplicate reporting, graduates should be counted in 
the school in which they were officially enrolled and should 
not be counted in centers (vocational/technical, special 
education, alternative education, etc.) in which they 
received specialized instruction or training for a part of 
the day. 

Each contact person for the Report of Graduates should 
coordinate the collection of the data for each school in the 
division and submit the data by e-mail to 
grads@pen.k12.va.us by the due date.  If electronic 
submission is not possible, forms should be sent to the 
address listed below.   

Questions or comments relating to the Report of Graduates 
should be directed to:

Data Administration
Office of Management Information Systems
Virginia Department of Education
P. O. Box 2120
101 N. 14th St., 22nd Floor
Richmond, Virginia 23218-2120
Telephone:  (804) 225-2099
Fax:  (804) 371-8978


PDS/dmb
Enclosures:     A hard copy of this memo and its attachment 
                will be sent to the superintendent's office.