Management of Duplicate Student Records

Version 7.0.0.1238

In January 2010, we added a feature to identify duplicate student records and allow a district user to merge duplicates into one record. Here are some answers to questions you may have:

How are duplicates identified?

The SIS import process detects duplicates by finding any two records where:

- All of the following values match: First name, Last name and Date of Birth, or

- SSNs match, plus one of the following values match: First name, Last name or Date of Birth

How do duplicate student records occur?

Duplicates can be caused by students leaving, then re-enrolling with a new student ID, or as a result of migration to a new SIS (for example, from SASIxp to PowerSchool).

Do I have to fix these duplicates?

You do not have to fix the duplicates. Chances are that you have had many duplicates for a long time, but were unaware of them. We added this new feature at the request of some districts. The benefit to merging duplicates is that their separate test scores, transcripts, absence/discipline history will be merged into one primary record.