TechEDge | California Community Colleges

An Advantage For California High School Grads

Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 September 2010 Written by Tim Calhoon Wednesday, 09 June 2010

The new California Transcript Connection partnership will help high school grads attend college.

eTranscript California and California School Information Services (CSIS) Transcript Center have teamed up to expand the hugely successful college transcript service to include high school transcripts.

The partnership, geared toward California students graduating high school, is known as the California Transcript Connection. This partnership provides the foundation for creating a secure web-based method for digital transcript delivery.

The program, funded by a grant from the California Department of Education (CDE), enables users to send transcripts to postsecondary institutions in California and across the country for a small fee. The service utilizes CSIS for data authentication and validation, and the National Transcript Center to translate student records into the recipients’ preferred data format and deliver using the recipients’ preferred method.

“This partnership provides a service that sets students up for the best possible opportunity of being accepted to their college of choice, especially now that UC and CSU campuses are capping enrollment,” said Tim Calhoon, Director of the California Community Colleges Technology Center, who has witnessed a streamlining of the delivery of student transcripts for students moving from community colleges to universities utilizing eTranscript California.

High school guidance counselors will:

• be able to send and track official transcripts in seconds with just a few short clicks.
• no longer have to print, process or mail transcripts to colleges.
• better service students by ensuring transcripts will not get lost, arrive at universities.
• instantly eliminate the potential for data entry errors.

The success of the service relies on the willingness of high school districts throughout the state to embrace the electronic technology and get their high schools on board.

“This is our biggest challenge,” says John DiPirro, a Director at CSIS, “because the process requires some effort on already burdened District IT departments. But when you consider what the schools will ultimately be saving in terms of time and money, we know it’s just a matter of time before high schools are lining up to participate.”

Currently, California ranks 40th in the number of high school students who go directly on to college.

“We’re optimistic that these numbers will improve as the college enrollment process becomes more streamlined and more data becomes available. Electronic transcripts are part of the solution,” Calhoon emphasized.

“Another advantage to the California Transcript Connection partnership, beyond cost savings to high schools, is the green factor. Not only is transcript paper expensive, but when you factor in the cost to the environment in terms of chemicals for processing trees and fuel, it’s just common sense to move in this direction.”

The CSIS program is a statutorily authorized local educational entity with the mission to build the capacity of local educational agencies (LEA) to implement and maintain comparable, effective and efficient student information systems fo school, district and county staff. CSIS assists electronic transmitting of state reports from LEA to the CDE, thereby reducing the reporting burden of LEA staff. CSIS also assists LEA to assign and maintain Statewide Student Identifiers (SSID).

eTranscript California is a statewide Internet-based system for electronic transcripts.

Initially built with funding from the California Community Colleges, it now has membership from institutions in the California State University System and independent colleges and universities across the state. <>

To find out more about this service visit the website at http://highschool.etranscriptca.org/ or contact CSIS (916) 325-9210 or support@csis.k12.ca.us.

Tim Calhoon is the eTranscript California project director
and Director of the CCC Technology Center.