If your Catholic school is an NCEA member, you can use Gradelink to automate the creation of the NCEA Databank Report. Your school not only can download the Excel spreadsheet, but can Submit the report to your Diocese if you are using the Diocesan portal for tracking submissions. 


To preview the NCEA Report, all you need to do is go to the Administrator Reports tab and click "NCEA Report". 




If you don't see this button in your interface, please contact Gradelink Support to enable NCEA reporting for your school. Then, perform the following steps:

  1. Update the School Profile
  2. Verify Staff information
  3. Verify Student information
  4. Verify Race Settings


Step 1 - Update the School Profile

The school profile can be accessed by going to the Settings tab and then clicking on "School Profile".



In the School Profile, the "General", "Catholic Info", "Day Care/Preschool", and "Gov't Programs" sections should all be updated prior to running the report. 





If you don't have access to these areas of the School Profile, please contact Gradelink Support to have them made available to you.



Step 2 - Verify Staff information

The NCEA Report pulls information from existing Staff and Student profiles, so the next step is to ensure that the appropriate information has been entered in Gradelink.





From the Staff tab, make sure that the following fields have been completed for each Staff member:

  • Employment Type
  • Professional Level
  • Race
  • Catholic
  • NCEA Census
  • NCEA Staff Type



Step 3 - Verify Student information

Unlike Staff accounts, Student accounts will have additional questions regarding the NCEA Census.





From the Demographics section of the Student tab, make sure that the following fields have been completed for each Student:


  • Race
  • NCEA Census - check appropriate boxes for each student


If you can't access any of these fields, please contact Gradelink Support.



Step 4 - Verify Race Settings


Note:  As of 2024, Ethnicity as a separate tracking has been removed and Hispanic/Latino has been consolidated into the Race field.


Gradelink is flexible and allows schools to define their own race categories as they see fit, or even avoid using the feature altogether.


However, the NCEA Report requires very specific racial categories:

  • American Indian / Alaska Native: Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America, including, for example, Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, Nome Eskimo Community, Aztec, and Maya;
  • Asian: Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Central or East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia, including, for example, Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese;
  • Black or African American: Individual with origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa, including, for example, African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, and Somali;
  • Hispanic or Latino:  Includes individuals of Mexican, Puerto Rican. Salvadoran, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, and other Central or South American or Spanish culture or origin;
  • Middle Eastern or North African:  Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of the Middle East or North Africa, including, for example, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli;
  • Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: Individual with origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands, including, for example, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, Tongan, Fijian, and Marshallese;
  • White: Individual with origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, including, for example, English, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Scottish;
  • Two or more races: Individual identifies with more than one racial group


This does not mean that you need to reset the race categories that have been setup for your school. Instead, you can make use of the Federal and NCEA Race Mapping tool, which allows you to associate your existing categories with the NCEA categories.


To access the Race Mapping tool, first go to the Race Designations page in the Settings tab.



To map your existing race categories to Federal or NCEA Race categories:

  1. Select an existing race designation from the list on the right.
  2. Select the Federal or NCEA race designation you would like to map it to.
  3. Hit Save.




To merge duplicate races simply select two duplicate races from the Race Designations list

In Windows:
Hold down the CTRL key while selecting two races

In Mac OS:
Hold down the command key while selecting two races

After selecting two races you will be presented with options to select the race that you want to Merge into. Simply select the appropriate race and then click the "Merge Races" button.





After you've updated your school profile and verified that your database has the correct information, you will be able to run the NCEA Report.



When you generate the Report in Gradelink, it will display the data arranged to match the "NCEA School" tab of the NCEA Databank Collection Excel Workbook. See the picture above for an example.



When you click "Export to Excel" to download the Report as a spreadsheet, the data will instead be formatted to match the "DataOnly" tab of the NCEA Databank Collection Excel Workbook. This will be the file you submit to your Diocesan Schools Office.