FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
OFFICE OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT (OADS)
Revised: October 1, 2019
Instructions for Using FASTER to Submit Transcripts to Bright Futures
Section 1.0 obsolete
2.0 Preparing Bright Futures Transcripts
Sections 3.0 through 7.0 obsolete
9.0 Problems with Transcript Errors
Section 10.0 obsolete
11.0 Contacting FASTER Support Staff
Sections 12.0 through 18.0 obsolete
19.0 Edit Errors (Transcript Content Problems)
2.0 Preparing Bright Futures Transcripts
The Bright Futures Transcript Evaluation System (the System) receives student transcripts from Florida public and private high schools and evaluates them to determine if the student is eligible for any of the Bright Futures Scholarship awards offered by the Florida Department of Education. The online system allows high school representatives to review and update the students' transcripts as needed. This online system requires the use of a web browser compatible with Internet Explorer 6.3 or higher.
The system processes student transcripts in two evaluation cycles (Early or Final). Transcripts are evaluated the evening of the day they are submitted (or resubmitted) for seniors, and weekly for underclassmen.
The principle difference between Early and Final Evaluations is that the Early
Evaluation makes use of the courses that the student has not yet completed. The
same grade point average criteria are used in both evaluations. In the Early Evaluation,
up to 1.0 credit in each subject area (English, Mathematics, Social Sciences, etc.)
can come from courses in progress (except for evaluations of the International Baccalaureate
and Advanced International Certificate in Education curricula, in which courses
in progress are not used). Courses in progress can be annual courses that are still
in progress or semester courses that are scheduled for the student's second
term of the academic year. Courses in progress are only used when a student has
no available required completed coursework in determining whether or not the student
has sufficient credits to qualify for an award. Courses in progress play no part
in the grade point average calculations.
The other major difference between Early and Final Evaluations is that the Early
Evaluation uses test score results from the tests taken on or before January 31st
of the student's year of graduation. The Final Evaluation uses test score results
from the tests taken through June 30th of the student's year of the graduation.
Students who improve their test scores between January 31st and June
30th may well benefit from a Final Evaluation of their transcripts.
Transcripts are
evaluated the evening of the day they are first submitted to the Production System.
They are editable in the Production System until the Bright Futures transcript locked date, giving the districts
and high schools the opportunity to review and make additional modifications.
Students will be notified of the evaluation results.
Additional changes can be made only after the school requests that the record be
"unlocked" by Bright Futures staff.
Students can be evaluated in either or both evaluation cycles. A student who is found ineligible in the Early Evaluation can enter the Final Evaluation and be found eligible for a scholarship. Or, a student found eligible for a lesser reward in the Early Evaluation can improve his standing in the last term and be evaluated again in the Final Evaluation cycle to qualify for a higher award. The results of the Final Evaluation can only improve a student's scholarship eligibility. If the student's Final Evaluation results qualify the student for a lesser award--or no award at all--the student would still retain the scholarship earned in the Early Evaluation unless the student fails to earn a standard Florida high school diploma.
2.1 FASTER Transcript Addresses - District 95 Processing
For both early and final evaluations, transcripts must be addressed to FASTER address 95. To identify the year and evaluation cycle, use the addressed high school field on the FASTER header record formatted YYSP.
YYSP - Bright Futures Practice or Production, Early or Final Evaluation
S-7 = 7th semester
-8 = 8th semester
P-1 = Production
Directions for
using the district 95 addressing scheme can be found at Web site http://www.fldoe.org/faster in the online FASTER User Manual, Appendix H.
Select the "Header" entry in the left sidebar, and scroll down to "Addressed
Institution."
Note that you specify
a graduation year in the addressed high school field. This allows you to submit
early transcripts for freshmen, sophomores and juniors and have them evaluated
according to the eligibility criteria that will be in effect in the student's year
of graduation.
Also, Bright Futures no longer
processes practice transcripts. Please submit to production '1'. If a transcript is
sent with a '0', it will be considered production and '0' will be ignored.
Both the FASTER
Interdistrict Formats (I00 through I08) and the FASTER
Secondary-to-Postsecondary Formats (S00 through S08) can be used when preparing
student transcripts. As long as all necessary evaluation information is provided,
either set of formats can be used (though the two types of formats cannot be intermingled
within a single transcript).
FASTER system edits
keep transcripts lacking certain basic information from ever being posted to the
Bright Futures mailbox. The edit report from program SRTS03 lets school districts
know immediately if a transcript submitted to the Bright Futures Scholarship Award
System does not contain enough information (or contains invalid information). The
school district can then complete or correct the transcript and re-submit it via
FASTER.
2.2 Transcript Submission Rules
In preparing transcripts
for submission to the Bright Futures System, please bear in mind the following rules:
“Timing is everything,” and this old saw is applicable to the Bright Futures evaluation
process. Ideally, a school district would
want to transmit their records to Bright Futures and have evaluations conducted
immediately. Unfortunately, cost considerations
do not permit this type of procedure. Instead
of on demand processing, Bright Futures evaluations are conducted on a nightly schedule.
On Mondays through Thursdays, the nightly Bright Futures process begins at 11:00pm. This timing is to give school districts the
opportunity to submit bulk transmissions to execute during NWRDC’s
reduced rate hours (class C,;see
section 3.0, above), which begin at 9:00pm.
This 2-hour window should leave enough time for school districts to post their transcripts
(which they have FTPed to NWRDC earlier in the day)
to the Bright Futures FASTER mailbox.
During the day, therefore, school districts can FTP their transcript files to NWRDC,
and then FTP the JCL to post the transcripts in class C.
That JCL will wait in class C until 9:00pm and then begin posting the transcripts
to the Bright Futures mailbox in FASTER.
At 11:00pm, the Bright Futures nightly run kicks off, picking up these transcripts
(and any transcripts posted by other school districts during the day) and running
them through the evaluation program. The
next morning when the school guidance counselors come in, the evaluation results
will be ready for viewing through the Bright Futures web system.
Additionally, any new student Florida Financial Aid Applications (without which
a transcript cannot be submitted to Production) get loaded to the system at the
start of the nightly run.
Thus,any applications filled out by students
through 6:00pm that day are available for matching with both existing transcripts
and those newly loaded with the nightly run.
The same kind of procedure operates on the weekend.
However, to give school districts the opportunity to load larger files, the
“Friday” run does not begin executing until 10:00am on Saturday morning.
That is the only evaluation conducted on the weekend, making a total of five
evaluations per week.
Note: In another cost reduction move, the transcripts
of underclassmen (freshmen, sophomores, and juniors) are only evaluated on the weekend
run. Transcripts for seniors (and students
from prior years’ senior classes who are undergoing special re-evaluations) are
evaluated in both weekday and weekend runs.
In this way, nightly evaluations are still conducted for students who are on the
point of receiving Bright Futures awards, while less time-critical evaluations are
conducted on the weekends to achieve the 75% class G savings.
9.0 Problems with Transcript
Errors
Your school district's MIS staff can avoid having transcripts rejected by running
your transcripts against the school district copy of the edit program (SRTS03) before
sending these Bright Futures transcripts to the DOE. In this way, your MIS staff
can reduce the number of unpleasant surprises when submitting Bright Futures transcripts
with a deadline approaching.
School district MIS staff still, though, must monitor their FASTER processing closely
to ensure that their data is arriving as intended. Check your error reports
to determine whether any of the records need to be corrected and re-sent.
Running the Outgoing Aging Report daily lets you know exactly when your records
have been picked up. It also helps the FASTER system archive out old records
that have been completely processed (improving system performance and freeing up
disk space see section 6.0, above).
In addition to monitoring your edit error reports, be sure to pay attention to ‘B’
type request records that Bright Futures sends back to you.
These will occur after a transcript successfully posts to FASTER but is later
rejected during the process of loading the transcript into the Bright Futures database. Your school district will receive its edit
error reports immediately after posting or attempting to post transcripts to FASTER. The ‘B’ type request records, though, are
only generated during the next Bright Futures evaluation cycle (typically, the following
evening). Therefore, be sure to check for
incoming request records the day after you post records to Bright Futures, since
that will usually be when you will receive notice of this type of rejection. As mentioned in section 2.0, above, see Appendix
D of the online FASTER User Manual for an explanation of these problem codes.
11.0 Contacting FASTER Support Staff
When submitting the Bright Futures transcripts to FASTER, should you experience delays, errors, unexpected results or have questions, please contact us at FSTR@fldoe.org.
19.0 Edit Errors (Transcript Content Problems)
If the job runs to completion but, upon review of the edit report, you find that
some of the transcripts were rejected and not transmitted to the Bright Futures
System, you should use the edit report to identify the rejected transcripts, correct
them, and resubmit them to the Bright Futures System. These transcripts were
rejected because they contained errors or omissions critical to the Bright Futures
transcript evaluation procedures.
You should share the fact that FASTER has rejected a transcript with the school
that sent the transcript. We often get calls from guidance counselors who
tell us that they have sent a transcript, but that it is not showing up on their
evaluation reports. They ask us where the transcript is and in those cases
where it was FASTER that rejected the transcript, we are unable to help them.
In such a case, we only know that someone has attempted to send a transcript
but has had it rejected. We are then forced to refer the school back to its
district MIS staff to learn the reason for the rejection (which is only carried
on the Edit Report). If you share the Edit Report with your schools when rejections
occur, you can speed their error resolution process (by taking us out of
the loop).
Finally: when in doubt, call one of the Applications Support numbers in section 11.0, above. The earlier in the processing period you call, the better (especially if you call before everyone else starts sending in their transcripts).