Even if a school district has a robust set of EMIS reporting standards in place, it’s still critical that it remains vigilant for signs of trouble.

Accurately recording and reporting education management information system (EMIS) data is essential to every public school district’s survival. The vast majority of any given district’s funding is based on EMIS or other similar data, and inaccuracies can lead to crippling underfunding or legal liability for overfunding.

As such, school districts that hope to secure maximum funding must make a sincere effort to establish and enforce thoughtful, comprehensive EMIS reporting standards. This can be done in a variety of ways — such as leveraging Vinson’s consulting services and CheckPoint EMIS platform — but even after a district has a data reporting system in place, its EMIS standards have to be continually applied and enforced.

In order to ensure that they remain on top of their reporting processes, school districts should keep their eyes peeled for the following four problems that pop up again and again across every kind of school district.

1. You suspect something is wrong, but you have trouble confirming the source, extent, or even existence of the problem.

More often than not, EMIS coordinators, district treasurers, and other student record validators will be the most data-literate individuals in a school district. These professionals should feel comfortable and confident enough to follow their instincts when they suspect that the data they are receiving is less than accurate.

If following that instinct proves difficult, it likely means your district’s chain of accountability for data reporting is either insufficient or nonexistent. EMIS coordinators and district treasurers should be able to quickly and easily follow the data’s path from stakeholder to stakeholder in order to ensure its accuracy. If the pathway is convoluted or ambiguous in any way, your district needs to review and reinforce its reporting standards.

2. Data reporting processes are inefficient, but entrenched.

If district stakeholders justify the way they handle data reporting by claiming “that’s the way it has always been done,” you know you’ve got a problem. Instead of actively looking for ways to innovate and improve upon their data reporting practices, some administrators, teachers, and support staff approach EMIS operations as just another tedious chore they must check off between clocking in and clocking out. As a result, outdated methods become entrenched among key district stakeholders, and it becomes inordinately difficult to implement best practices.

3. Poorly drawn (or inconsistent) job descriptions are causing confusion.

A clear delineation of what each stakeholder is responsible for is essential to an effective reporting system. Poorly formulated or unclear job descriptions cause some people to do less than their job should entail and leaves others to pick up the slack.

Not only does this negatively impact each employee’s ability to put their unique skills to good use, but it also makes it harder to enforce accountability for reporting. If one employee makes a mistake while doing what a second employee was supposed to be doing, tracing this error back to its source becomes exponentially more difficult.

4. Employees are noticeably apathetic.

One of the biggest challenges of enforcing data reporting protocols in a school setting is the ostensibly tangential relationship between reporting operations and the day-to-day work of education. Even though it ultimately pays everyone’s salary, accurate data reporting can seem like it’s entirely divorced from what goes on in the classroom.

Consequently, even highly engaged employees often lack a strong motivation to properly report their EMIS data. Employees who are already dissatisfied with or apathetic toward their job almost certainly won’t make the extra effort required to adhere to strict EMIS reporting standards.

So be proactive and consistent in your explanations of the value of accurate reporting to teachers and other faculty members. Remind them how much you all have to gain from grabbing your fair share of the funding pie — you might just get the buy-in you need to ensure your district never misses the mark on EMIS reporting again.