SSID's

An SSID, or State Student IDentifier, provides a unique identifier for every Utah student, following a student through their academic career in Utah. It's used to identify each student in all USBE systems, which tracks the student's progress and enrollment. More specifically, grades, attendance, special education, vital statistics, and it can even track financial reimbursements. When using SSID's, we have noticed some recurring challenges with duplicate entries, incorrect retrievals, merges, and in training. A small mistake with an SSID can cause huge problems for a student, or an administration. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with this section. Please reach out to the SSID helpline with questions.

Challenges

  • Duplicates
    • Some of the causes for duplicate entries could be due to misspelled names, transposed birthdates, incorrect separation on names, assumptions, or creating a new one to test. Duplicates create multiple SSIDs for one student, impair student data integrity, have negative ramifications for the student's future, and incorrect reporting. There's even a negative impact on funding when examining drop-out rates, dual enrollment counts, and special education funding. 
  • Incorrect Retrievals
    • Some of the causes for incorrect retrievals are due to assumptions, changing primary attributes to match, and hurried retrievals. Incorrect retrievals can result in dual enrollment, impair student data integrity, have negative ramifications for the student's future, and incorrect reporting. There's even a negative impact on funding when examining drop-out rates, dual enrollment counts, and special education funding. 
  • Merges
    • A merge is caused when an SSID is created when one already exists. This can be due to misspelled names, transposed birthdates, incorrect separation on names, assumptions, changing primary attributes to match, or creating a new one to test. Incorrect merges can result in dual enrollment, impair student data integrity, have negative ramifications for the student's future, and incorrect reporting. There's even a negative impact on funding when examining drop-out rates, dual enrollment counts, and special education funding. 

Remember

  • When enrolling a student:
    • Contact the previously attended school, when the student does not match exactly
      • Previous School information is found in the Student History in the SSID application
    • Do not retrieve a student that is not a perfect match without verifying with the previous school(s)
    • Only retrieve the student when the correct student is positively identified
  • Do not ignore match verification requests
  • Only create a new SSID number when its verified:
    • That the student is new to the State of Utah
    • Has not been enrolled in another State of Utah School and does not have another SSID

Ramifications

  • School assessment reports are inaccurate and state reports are inaccurate
  • Student assessment reports are inaccurate
  • Student transcripts are inaccurate and reported inaccurately to higher education institutions
  • Loss of scholarships
  • IEP information assigned to the wrong student in state databases
  • Behavior incidents assigned to the wrong student in state databases
  • Student critical information is assigned to the wrong student in state databases
  • Loss of school funding

SSID Help Line