FASTER CHANGES FOR 2001-2002

Effective: November 18, 2001
Revised Date: November 11, 2001

Administrative Reminders and Issues
Districts and Postsecondaries

Check out the FASTER web page and sign up for the new FASTER listserv by sending an e-mail to fstr@firn.edu. Then send messages to everyone on the list by addressing your e-mail to faster@wizard.firn.edu or just use the link on the website. Documentation on how to use the listserv can be found at http://www.firn.edu/mailserv/mailserver_howto.html.

From user calls received, it is apparent that the meaning of Test/Production Indicator (item 6a, format I/S/P00) is not clear to all. This field indicates whether the data in this transmission is test or production. The valid values are T=Test or P=Production. If an institution receives a request for a test transcript then the response should also indicate a test status.

Districts Only

It is very important that the sending district include the scaled scores for HSCT and/or FCAT in the FASTER test format (I/S08) when sending a student's transcript. Lack of specific test scores could result in the student being incorrectly evaluated for Diploma/Certificate of Completion.

Detailed information (school name, phone number, CEEB number, etc.) about public high schools is available on the MSID file. Information regarding that file and other files available and helpful to FASTER users, such as the DOE Course, Vocational Course and Private School Files, are found in Appendix B.

Postsecondaries Only

The Office of Postsecondary Education Identification (OPEID) file may be used for sending the Institutional Code (item 3, P05) when a FICE code is not known. Information regarding that file and other files available and helpful to FASTER users, such as the DOE Course, Vocational Course and Private School Files, are found in Appendix B.

Transfer work on some community college transcripts are not getting included in the electronic record. If the sending institution has this information, it should be sent.

Functional System Changes

Districts and Postsecondaries

Three special characters, tilde (~), caret (^), and grave accent (`), are used as delimiters in the translation of FASTER to SPEEDE/ExPRESS. They are now reserved symbols and as such cannot be included in data sent through FASTER to a SPEEDE/ExPRESS institution. If sent, they will be rejected. See Chapter II for a discussion of electronic transfer via SPEEDE/ExPRESS.

Reject edits have been added to clean up the data being sent in Item 16a, SPEEDE/ExPRESS Transaction Control ID and Item 16b, SPEEDE/ExPRESS Institution. Please note that when responding to a SPEEDE/ExPRESS request, all data from Part A is placed, unaltered, in Part B, just as it has always been with FASTER.

Currently, SPEEDE/ExPRESS Transaction set 146 (Request for Student Educational Record (Transcript) sent from USF or FAU generates duplicate FASTER requests, one from 10002 and one from USF (1537) or FAU (1481). SPEEDE/ExPRESS Transaction set 130 (Student Educational Record (Transcript) generates duplicate FASTER responses. This duplication of requests and responses will be discontinued in November and FASTER institutions will receive only the one sent from 10002. This means that all FASTER institutions must be able to send to and receive data from a SPEEDE/ExPRESS institution. See Appendix Q in the FASTER User Manual.

A new message type, Q05, has been added to accomodate SPEEDE/ExPRESS. This message type is used by FIRN to identify SPEEDE/ExPRESS tranasactions that, due to timing issues, we are unable to match to the original request. See Appendix D in the FASTER User Manual.

NOTE: Changes which were made to FASTER over the course of the previous year (i.e., since the original 2000-2001 manual was published in September 2000) are listed in Updates to the 2000-2001 Version of FASTER.

Districts Only

District 95 is now the only valid address for Bright Futures. Any transcripts sent to districts 91-94 will be rejected. Details can be found in the definitions of Number of District and Number of School in the Header Record format in Appendix H.

Edit program SRTS03 will no longer require transcripts that are sent to Outstanding High School Juniors (where Addressed Institution is 700 and Message Type is A02) to meet any edits except for those on the Header and Demographic formats (I/S00, I/S01).

The edits for Student Number Identifier, Florida (item 2, I/S00 and I/S01) and Student Number Identifier-Alias, Florida (item 7, I/S01) have been modified so that if the tenth byte of the field is 'X', the first three bytes cannot be all zeroes.

The edits for Grade Point Average District, Cumulative and Grade Point Average, State (items 43 and 44, format I/S01) have been modified to require a valid value when the addressee is 82 (Talented Twenty) or 96 (SSFAD).

In order to prevent transmission of sensitive interdistrict data on the secondary subset of the transcript, Dropout Prevention data elements, items 42-50, will be edited to insure blanks when record type is S05.

An edit has been added for format I/S08 that will prevent a Test Score (item 14) being sent without a Test Score Type (item 15). The existing edit that requires a Test Subject Content Code (item 12) be valid for the Test Name (item 9) will be validated.

Format Changes

District Name and Number Table - Appendix A

Accessing Code Files Available at NWRDC - Appendix B

State Codes - Appendix C

Header Record Message Type Codes - Appendix D

Header Format - Appendix H

I/S/P00

Postsecondary Formats - Appendix J

P01

P02 P03 P04

P05

P06

P07

P08

Interdistrict/Secondary Formats - Appendix I

I/S01

I/S02

I/S03

I/S04

I/S05

I06

I/S07

I/S08

Participant Status Format - Appendix K

FASTER and SPEEDE/ExPRESS Conversion - Appendix Q