The Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) encompasses all data requested and received by TEA about public education, including student demographic and academic performance, personnel, financial, and organizational information.
The data collected through the PEIMS electronic collection method has:
- A standard set of definitions, codes, formats, procedures, and dates for the collection of data published as the PEIMS Data Standards;
- Standard editing procedures;
- An established database design;
- A production system to format and load data into the TEA enterprise database; and
- Written documentation describing the numeric and alphanumeric values stored in the database is published as the Data Documentation.
For the PEIMS electronic collection, school districts submit their data via standardized computer files, as defined by the PEIMS Data Standards.
Technical support for gathering the data from district databases is supplied by one of the twenty educational service centers (ESCs) or by private vendors. A software system of standard edits, to enhance the quality of data, is used by ESCs and again by the agency on district data submissions. Currently, the major categories of data collected are:
- organizational,
- budget,
- actual financial,
- staff,
- student demographic,
- program participation,
- school leaver,
- student attendance,
- course completion, and
- discipline.
TEA manages other collections for evaluation, monitoring, funding, or auditing. Many are automated, electronic collections.
In compliance with the Texas Education Code, PEIMS contains only the data necessary for the legislature and TEA to perform their legally authorized functions in overseeing public education.
