[Tx-speed] Acknowledgments Expected on TREx High School Transcripts

[David Stones]

***      also posted to TACRAO listserv. ****
Texas SPEEDE/ExPRESS followers - The TREx Electronic High School 
Transcript is showing good numbers - 2,496 delivered during the month of 
March, which is not generally a heavy month.   There have also been a 
fair number of TREx-related exchanges on the TACRAO listserv, and that 
is a good sign.

Part of the longstanding SPEEDE/ExPRESS protocol calls for the 
institution which receives a transcript (transaction set #130) to 
generate and return an acknowledgment (transaction set #131).   This 
assures the initial sender that the transcript was successfully received 
and not modified.   The monthly UT Server stats(located at  
http://www.utexas.edu/student/giac/speede/server/logrpts/) show that 
during March, 86.6% of all transcripts were acknowledged by TS131's, in 
addition to a large number of functional acknowledgments (TS997) used by 
some schools (one per file).

Our contacts at TEA have reported to me that high schools are having 
problems with Texas colleges not returning TS131 acknowledgments for the 
TREx transcripts they receive.   The TREx system marks a transcript 
delivery as CANCELED if an acknowledgment is not received within 15 
days, and they were able to send me a 62 page report of such 
instances.   The report covered many months, and I did not feel our 
record was still all that bad, so I looked at the usage reports for 
recent months.    Looking again at March, the relatively good news is 
that 2298 TS131 files were sent to TEA that month.  However, over 600 of 
those were make-up acknowledgments from past months sent by UTSA, so TEA 
was really missing over 800 acknowledgments.  Of 82 Texas schools 
receiving TREx transcripts that month, only 37 returned any 
acknowledgments to TEA, and some others only sent about half as many as 
received.

Now we did not KNOW that unacknowledged transcripts would be marked as 
canceled, and high schools didn't all follow the protocol that was 
agreed upon regarding which schools should be receiving TREx (just as 
many colleges did not). Many Texas colleges were also new to the 
business of receiving and processing electronic high school 
transcripts.  Some of us will be discussing those issues with TEA after 
graduation.   However, all Texas public high schools are SUPPOSED to be 
sending TREx, and all Texas public colleges are SUPPOSED to be receiving.

TS131 acknowledgments are pretty easy to generate using the free, 
downloadable Quick & Easy Software found on the UT Austin SPEEDE website 
(mentioned above).  This same software produces somewhat more concise 
printed copies of the TREx transcripts.   TREx would work much better 
for the high schools if we all followed the protocol and returned 
acknowledgments.

TREx and the software will be among the topics discussed during the 
(approximately 15th annual) Texas SPEEDE User Group meeting in Austin on 
June 10 - the day before the Apply Texas meeting.   Dale Ganus posted a 
message about that, and registration is now available via the TACRAO 
website.   Make hotel reservations (if needed) early due to the Republic 
of Texas motorcycle rally.  If you have not already done so, you might 
want to check out the TREx pages on the UT Austin site - 
http://registrar.utexas.edu/speede/trex/index.html.

Thanks.  Dave Stones.






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