An Audit Report on the Texas Records Exchange System at the Texas Education Agency
October 2010
Report Number 11-010
Overall Conclusion
The Texas Education Agency (Agency) operates the Texas Records Exchange (TREx) system as designed and facilitates the electronic transfer of student records in a secure manner. However, the Agency should improve its administration of TREx to increase participation by all public school districts, open-enrollment charter schools, and higher education institutions in Texas.
The Texas Education Code requires schools to participate in TREx for the transfer of electronic student records sent to other schools and transcripts sent to higher education institutions. The Agency has not formally defined what constitutes participation by a school or higher education institution. Instead, the Agency considers a school to be participating for reporting purposes if the school sends at least one student record using TREx during the prior year (see text box).
This reporting methodology does not sufficiently identify schools that are not using all TREx capabilities on a consistent basis. Based on feedback provided by several school registrars, using TREx to send student records is more cost-effective than sending records manually. Some registrars at the schools that auditors visited estimated that using TREx resulted in a time savings of 2 to 20 minutes per record transferred. TREx processed more than 276,000 records from September 2009 through March 2010, resulting in savings of administrative costs. Other schools may experience similar cost savings if they consistently use all TREx capabilities.
Auditors' survey of school registrars indicated that approximately 61 percent of responding schools stated that they still send student records and/or transcripts manually at least some of the time. In addition, approximately 8 percent of all 193 respondents stated that they had never sent student records electronically in TREx.
The Agency has not yet established TREx as the primary method for transferring transcripts (see text box for the types of student information that can be transferred through TREx). Fifteen percent of the 46 responding high school registrars indicated that they have never sent transcripts electronically in TREx. In addition, a report on how many transcripts have been received by Texas public higher education institutions showed that only 47 percent had received more than 50 electronic transcripts through TREx from September 2007 through March 2010.
To help increase the use of TREx among schools and higher education institutions, the Agency should increase its oversight and support of TREx users in addition to improving its methodology. Specifically, the Agency should:
- Communicate directly with registrars who transfer student records. Some of the Agency's previous communications about TREx never reached the school registrars who use TREx.
- Encourage registrars to receive TREx training. Registrars at 15 schools, or 58 percent of the 26 schools that auditors visited, indicated that they were dissatisfied with the quality and completeness of the training received, and 12 survey responses, or 6 percent of 193 registrars surveyed, stated they had training.
- Increase its coordination and communication with the Higher Education Coordinating Board and high schools to increase the use of TREx for submitting transcripts and providing test scores that many higher education institutions need to process admissions applications.
- Provide additional technical and administrative support to TREx users. Many schools reported common problems that discouraged them from using TREx. These included problems with obtaining and using scanners and TREx software; a lack of coordination of support resources at the region, school district, and Agency levels; and a lack of coordination with student information system vendors to encourage automation of the process of importing and exporting student records.
In addition, the Agency adhered to most applicable federal and state statutes and applicable rules regarding data confidentiality; however, it should improve its access controls over TREx. Auditors reviewed a sample of TREx user accounts and determined that 13 percent were unnecessary accounts and 10 percent were accounts assigned to former employees, which increases the risk of unauthorized exposure of confidential student information stored in TREx or other Agency systems.
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