Ed-Fi Alliance https://www.ed-fi.org/ Connecting student data. Once. And for all. Tue, 23 Jan 2024 17:57:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.ed-fi.org/assets/2017/07/cropped-logo-125x125.png Ed-Fi Alliance https://www.ed-fi.org/ 32 32 Community Profile: Tim Ackermann on Building a Data Culture in Classrooms https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2024/01/tim-ackermann-building-a-data-culture-in-classrooms/ Tue, 23 Jan 2024 17:57:57 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9530 Tools collecting education data are part of every education system today. Many schools, however, struggle with turning that data into… Read more »

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Tim Ackermann on Building a Data Culture in Classrooms

Tools collecting education data are part of every education system today. Many schools, however, struggle with turning that data into meaningful insights for teachers and students.

Tim Ackermann has a vision to change that. Since beginning his career as a high school teacher, he has amassed more than 30 years of experience in education. Today, Tim serves as assistant superintendent at the Hamilton County Educational Service Center (ESC), providing support services to schools and districts in Southwest Ohio.

We recently sat down with Tim to chat about his experiences leveraging data throughout his career and how he envisions the future of data in the classroom.

Over the past three decades, you’ve worked as a teacher, principal, and superintendent. How have these experiences shaped the way you think about data in the classroom?

Tim: When I started teaching, we didn’t do much beyond collecting grades or attendance data. As technology progressed and became more influential in the classroom, data became more available, but educators weren’t sure how to fit that into a system, and we didn’t yet have a culture of being data-informed.The idea of being “data-driven” emerged and put an emphasis on data in the pedagogy, but there was too much focus on the data itself — or using data to judge what’s happening in the school districts and classrooms — rather than incorporating it into a system that ultimately helps students and teachers. As a field, we’re still struggling with creating a culture of understanding how data can help and not penalize.

When you scale back and look at the big picture, what is your hope for how we use data to impact students and teachers in the classroom going forward?

Tim: I would love for teachers to log in every morning and have a dashboard that helps them understand how students are learning and which students may be struggling without having to evaluate all of the data. As much as we can, we need to let teachers teach rather than spend their time translating data. We need to help them understand what the data says so they can use it to change their lesson plans or the mode of the modality of what they’re doing in the classroom.

And I know we’re not quite there yet, but I think a piece that’s going to become very important is how artificial intelligence can support this process and help them understand the data isn’t there to say, “You’re doing poorly as a teacher,” but to say, “This is where your students are struggling and here’s how can we help them.”

I’m a firm believer that you have to develop a culture of understanding and learning together before you can make something meaningful. One way to build culture that we found to be very effective is to learn together. So, instead of just telling teachers that data is important, you learn about why data is important and how it can be helpful, and encourage everyone to ask questions until you get to the point where people truly understand

When you think of data being used for student and classroom outcomes, what would you consider success? What does it look like?

Tim: Success is teachers being able to look at data in a non-threatening way and use it to understand who needs support. But I also think of everything as a safety net. We’re big proponents of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), and data is foundational to that.

MTSS has an educational component, a social-emotional health component, and a behavior component. If we can create safety nets so we’re not losing kids and so we can help them succeed in the classroom, then that’s a win. And if we can continue to help students in their core program be successful, they won’t need the more tiered interventions that they may eventually need if they can’t understand the core program.

What would you say to other education service agencies as they look at offering data services to their districts?

Tim: Someone has to offer data services to districts, and if districts could see the power of data services, I think a lot more would be doing this.

One way we’re working to bring this to the state level in Ohio is by including our information technology centers, or ITCs, that host most of the systems in the state. So, if they can host our warehouse and the ESCs are providing that service, we hope the state will see the power it can have — not only to save money but to help students in the classroom.

What keeps you motivated on the journey with Ed-Fi with data interoperability in education?

Tim: Data interoperability has become a passion of ours in a very short period of time. We knew what it was before we knew the term. We had people collecting data from various sources, manually putting it into spreadsheets, and trying to use it to tell a story. But it takes a lot of human capital to get the data into a useful format, and then you still have to constantly go back and update it, which takes a lot of time, and manual data entry can lead to errors.

The question became, “How do we get all this data into one place so it can talk to each other?” And no one knew the answer. Then we discovered Ed-Fi, and it was like, “Wow, this could definitely be our solution to getting all the data into one place and being able to visualize it for teachers.”

Data interoperability will help cut down on errors, create more transparency, and help public education become more efficient and effective in how we work with our students.

Tim Ackermann is currently Assistant Superintendent at Hamilton County ESC in Cincinnati, Ohio. Previously, Tim has served as superintendent of Kings Local School District, assistant superintendent of Milford Exempted Village School District, and a principal at Reading City Schools. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn!

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Ed-Fi Data Standard Version 5.0 Now Available https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/12/ed-fi-data-standard-version-5-0/ Fri, 15 Dec 2023 14:57:46 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9525 The Ed-Fi Alliance released the Ed-Fi Data Standard v5.0, along with the latest version of the Ed-Fi ODS/API (v7.1). With… Read more »

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The Ed-Fi Alliance released the Ed-Fi Data Standard v5.0, along with the latest version of the Ed-Fi ODS/API (v7.1). With the Ed-Fi Data Standard v5.0, users receive a new domain, Student Program Evaluation, a new association, Student Special Education Program Eligibility Association, and breaking changes to the Section Model, Special Education Program Association, Student School Association, and Student Academic Record.  

The Ed-Fi Data Standard version 4.0, released in 2022, introduced breaking changes in descriptor mapping, student academic report domain, assessment domain and finance domain. During that time, the Ed-Fi Alliance decided to test a new policy on the Data Standard release cadence: allow major (breaking) changes to the core model in two consecutive years, followed by a third year of minor (non-breaking) changes. 

The Ed-Fi Data Standard v5.0 is the product of the second year of breaking changes aligned with this policy and there will not be any breaking changes to the standard in 2024. These changes are a direct result of the Ed-Fi Alliance Community’s feedback received over the last two years. Two early releases (v5.0-pre1 and v5.0-pre2) included all but the section model updates, giving community members a chance to review the proposed changes in a live environment using ODS/API 7.0.  Below, you will find details about changes introduced to the Ed-Fi Data Standard this year. 

Special education (SpEd) has been added to the focus areas because of the SpEd program eligibility assessment process and procedures and its conjunction with the early childhood education domain. With this addition to the core model, community members can now store and track students’ SpEd program eligibility assessments and eligibility determination directly in the Ed-Fi API. 

In addition, a new domain Student Program Evaluation was created. The domain introduces program evaluation specific data collection through the rubric, objective, and element entities as well as Program Evaluation and Student Program Evaluation entities which are associated with the Student, Staff and Program entities. More than two dozen previously deprecated data elements have been removed with this latest version. To assist community members with future removals, users are encouraged to follow the new guide provided at the attached link.  

The final update introduced in the v5.0 model is inclusive renaming. These changes include renaming the Parent entity to Contact, adding Preferred First and Last Surname, clarifying the purpose of Sex Descriptor, and adding Gender Identity. A full list of these domains and more details can be found at the What’s New – v5.0 page.  

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Introducing the Texas Education Exchange https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/11/texas-education-exchange/ Mon, 13 Nov 2023 13:57:35 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9512 The Texas Education Exchange can benefit millions of students and educators in the Lone Star State. Our product launched statewide… Read more »

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The Texas Education Exchange can benefit millions of students and educators in the Lone Star State. Our product launched statewide just a few weeks ago, with tools that efficiently connect educators to data that can shape decisions on campus and in the classroom. With easier access to essential information, we give educators time back in their day to focus on students.

What makes The Exchange different is our approach. Through collaboration at the regional level, the state of Texas is embarking on a new way to enable data interoperability in districts and charter schools. The Exchange is guided by a Collaborative, comprised of five Regional Education Service Centers (ESCs), including Regions 4 in Houston, 10 in Dallas, 11 in Ft. Worth, 13 in Austin, and 20 in San Antonio. Collaborative ESC representatives serve on The Exchange Board and Steering Committee, which shape the operational framework and guide its strategy. Ultimately, the collaboration around The Exchange will expand beyond these five leaders; the hope is that all 20 regions across the state will join and help grow The Exchange from a grassroots level.  

The Exchange is working to educate and recruit other regions through our Ambassador Program. This team, along with our Regional Support Teams, can grow the network to reach  Texas’ 1,200 unique districts. These stewards of The Exchange are the heart of our work, the relationship builders, and those who know their districts best. They can offer knowledge and support while onboarding new members.  

This launch of The Exchange is the culmination of multiple years of planning, research, design, and development by The Exchange team and our partners. The partner list includes industry leaders, the Ed-Fi Alliance, and the Texas Education Agency.  

The October 2023 release of The Exchange delivers essential data infrastructure services, including an Onboarding Wizard and technical admin console, core features like The Exchange community, and Leadership Analytics and educator dashboards. These tools create efficiencies for districts, freeing up time to focus on students. With standardized and automated workflows, educators can populate reports with data integrated from various sources to have comprehensive insights at their fingertips. Regions can provide more efficient and scalable support to their districts and charter schools. The Exchange empowers educators with tools and insights to bolster student success.  

The Ed-Fi Alliance Community has advanced data interoperability in education into what it is today. The Exchange, in partnership with the Ed-Fi Alliance Community, will continue championing innovative options to assist educators in furthering student achievement. We are proud to have worked alongside many partners in this community to build the framework for the future of education data in Texas.

The Exchange is free to all Texas districts and charter schools during the 2023-2024 school year. Please contact The Exchange team if you would like to learn more or be a part of the future of data interoperability in Texas.  

Jerry Lashley is the director of the Texas Education Exchange. He spent 12 years in public service for cities and organizations before moving into education. His experience in entrepreneurship, business, and service allowed him to dream big and see opportunities where others did not. Jerry has devoted 16 years to public education, spending nearly a decade with YES! Prep Public Schools in Houston and five years with the Region 4 Educational Service Center. His primary focus has been business operations, including transportation, safety and health, child nutrition, technology, ASCENDER, and TSDS/PEIMS. During his work at Region 4, Jerry found educators at all levels lacked access to simple data interoperability that would allow them to do their jobs more efficiently and help students in the process. That’s when he began reaching out to learn more about what could solve this entrenched statewide problem. Through this journey, Jerry discovered the Ed-Fi Data Standard, which would help him realize this dream of interoperability in Texas. He began working toward a solution that would benefit all regions, all districts, and all educators. Jerry now runs all day-to-day operations of The Exchange, connecting organizations while building a new outlook on technology from the ground up in Texas.

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Ed-Fi Alliance 2023 Community Awards Recipients https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/11/ed-fi-alliance-2023-community-awards-recipients/ Thu, 02 Nov 2023 14:30:43 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9516 The Ed-Fi Alliance announced its 2023 Community Award recipients during the 2023 Summit. This is the seventh year for this… Read more »

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A group photo of the 2023 Community Award winners.

The Ed-Fi Alliance announced its 2023 Community Award recipients during the 2023 Summit. This is the seventh year for this recognition of leaders who represent exceptional work and significant contributions to the educational field. This year’s recognition included a $5,000 charitable donation to a U.S. public charity in the name of each awardee.

The recipients were as follows:

  • Ed-Fi Ambassador of the Year: Andrew Rice, Education Analytics, for consistently advocating for the Ed-Fi Alliance and data interoperability with district, state, and federal stakeholders.
  • Ed-Fi Rookie of the Year: Loudoun County Public Schools for its creation of an assessment-focused deployment that has revolutionized data-driven decision-making for its schools.
  • Ed-Fi Innovator/Innovation of the Year: The Resultant team of Curt Merlau, Sara Hunter, Bobby Grimm, Joshua Impson, Caleb Bush, Brittney Goodwin, and Jill Sanders, for developing a comprehensive dashboard that helps Indiana educators, learners, and parents better interact with and understand education data.
  • Ed-Fi Community Service Award: Josh Allen, Denver Public Schools, for his commitment to ensuring successful implementation for the district and his work managing its development, data warehouse, and business intelligence teams.

Congratulations again to all our 2023 Ed-Fi Alliance Community Award Winners. Thank you for all your meaningful work to support student outcomes and for what you do for the community!

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The Ed-Fi Alliance 2023 Community Awards: Nominations Now Open!  https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/08/ed-fi-alliance-2023-community-awards-nominations/ Thu, 31 Aug 2023 22:51:45 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9499 The Ed-Fi Alliance’s Community Awards program recognizes exceptional work and significant contributions to student outcomes using data. Since 2017, the… Read more »

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The Ed-Fi Alliance’s Community Awards program recognizes exceptional work and significant contributions to student outcomes using data. Since 2017, the Ed-Fi Alliance has highlighted individuals and organizations advocating for its mission to change the way education is delivered and support learners everywhere with connected, interoperable data. Past awardees are leaders in the community and represent some of the most innovative thinking and transformative impact.

This year, recognition will include a $5,000 charitable donation to a U.S. public charity in the name of each awardee.

Nominate someone today! 

Click HERE to nominate a member of the Ed-Fi Community! Nominations will close on Tuesday, September 26.

The Ed-Fi Governance Advisory Team will vote on the nominees. Award recipients will be announced at the 2023 Summit on October 25.

Nomination Categories & Criteria

Ed-Fi Ambassador of the Year

This award honors a consistent commitment to the Ed-Fi Alliance Community and the benefits of interoperability. Nominees in this category are recognized advocates in the education technology sector, using data to impact teaching and learning, and leading interoperability efforts within their organization.

Ed-Fi Rookie of the Year

This award is designed to recognize our newest participants that have demonstrated their commitment to data interoperability by quickly ramping up on the technology and diving into their Ed-Fi Technology implementation and engagement with the broader community. Nominations are open to any individual or entity engaged in the Ed-Fi Alliance Community for two years or less.

Ed-Fi Innovation 

This award is designed to recognize teams who have successfully solved big education challenges and can demonstrate how they used the data to support students. Nominees in this category should have contributed to the technical work of the Ed-Fi Alliance, demonstrated a commitment to the Ed-Fi Data Standard and have demonstrated collaborative efforts to help others within the community.

Ed-Fi Community Service Award 

This award recognizes a demonstrated commitment to interoperability and the Ed-Fi Alliance Community by being a thoughtful partner and a visionary in the use of data to improve outcomes for learners. Recipients of this award will have made a significant contribution back to the community.

Nominate an Ed-Fi Alliance Community leader today!

 

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Discover the Game-Changing Features of Upcoming Ed-Fi API v7.0 Release https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/07/ed-fi-api-v7-0-features/ Wed, 05 Jul 2023 19:14:00 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9485 The Ed-Fi ODS / API has undergone significant development over the years, transforming into a robust tool for collecting and… Read more »

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The Ed-Fi ODS / API has undergone significant development over the years, transforming into a robust tool for collecting and accessing education data. The Ed-Fi community has played a critical role in guiding its evolution and the introduction of key features, including addition of PostgreSQL support Ed-Fi ODS / API, migration to .NET core, docker deployments, and dynamic extensions. With the ODS / API development team gearing up for the v7.0 release, this article explores some of the upcoming enhancements that have been prioritized by the Ed-Fi community. ODS/API v7.0 is scheduled for release on in late-July/early-August and includes early access to Data Standard v5.0-pre1. (Keep an eye on our Slack channel for real-time updates.) The full production-ready 7.1 release is scheduled for November 30. For more information about Ed-Fi releases, see the Ed-Fi Technology Roadmap (community login required). 

Flexible Data Standard Version Support in the Ed-Fi ODS / API

Last October, we published a revised release and support cadence that unblocks data standard evolution and announces a 3-year support cycle. To accommodate this release and support cadence more effectively, we are making changes to Ed-Fi ODS / API tech stack that enables us to build, release, and support the ODS / API for multiple major versions of the data standard concurrently. With the upcoming release, we are decoupling the API and Data Standard artifacts, making it possible to release the latest API code with a previous Data Standard version. We are excited that this decoupling would allow implementations to take advantage of bug fixes and improvements made to the tech suite and take in supported data standard updates with a cadence that suits their institution.  

Dynamic Profile Configuration

Ed-Fi ODS / API profiles enable creation of data a policy for a set of API resources limiting the data (properties, collections, and collection items) that is available for reading and writing. In the past releases, configuring profiles required rebuild and redeployment from source code. With the upcoming ODS / API release, profiles can be defined and updated at runtime without the need for recompiling or redeploying. Additionally, profiles will integrate seamlessly with extension plugins. This feature will enable changes to data policy even after the deployment of ODS / API throughout the school year as consumer needs change. 

Multi-Tenancy, Deployment Modes, Routing

These changes are aimed at providing flexibility to the platform host in terms of where the ODS, Admin, and Security databases are stored while ensuring that these configurations remain transparent to the API client. The existing deployment modes offered by the ODS / API platform provide some level of flexibility in segregating data in a deployment, but they fall short in providing additional configurations that managed service providers need to support their clients. Current configurations lack uniformity, and some of the modes do not support all features in the API. To address these challenges, we are working on an alternative approach that is simpler and more flexible. The proposed changes, as outlined in the published design allows for more customized and flexible deployment configurations. Of course, achieving this requires a significant programming effort and internal architecture rearrangement. The Ed-Fi ODS development team has been working hard to deliver this in the upcoming release. 

We would like to thank in particular the participants of the ODS / API Feature Enhancements special interest group and the Ed-Fi Technical Advisory Group for their time and energy in helping us make important decisions on these enhancements. 

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Summit 2023 Call For Session Proposals https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/06/summit-2023-call-for-session-proposals/ Thu, 22 Jun 2023 21:58:37 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9479 The call for session proposals is currently closed. The deadline for submission was July 14.  Are you ready to contribute… Read more »

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The call for session proposals is currently closed. The deadline for submission was July 14. 

Are you ready to contribute your thoughts and ideas? Join us for creating a Roadmap to the Future: Enabling Data-Driven Student Success at the 2023 Ed-Fi Alliance Summit October 23-26, in Austin, Texas.

Whether you are new to the Ed-Fi Alliance, or if you’ve been a part of the community for more than 10 years, if you have a valuable perspective that can help make an impact on our community, we invite you to submit a session.

From avoiding roadblocks (costs, capacity, resources, and technology roadmaps) to rest stops (case studies and success stories), sightseeing (collaboration and partnerships) and superhighways (technical innovations and new ideas) we invite you to share stories, ideas, success, and challenges by filling out the below proposal form.

 

 

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Tech Congress 2023: Pre-Conference Survey https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2023/02/tech-congress-2023-pre-conference-survey/ Fri, 03 Feb 2023 07:36:04 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9435 The Ed-Fi Alliance brings people together to solve education’s most entrenched data challenges. Ed-Fi’s Technical Congress gathers education’s best minds… Read more »

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The Ed-Fi Alliance brings people together to solve education’s most entrenched data challenges.

Ed-Fi’s Technical Congress gathers education’s best minds to build community, innovate our approach to data governance, and help the Ed-Fi Technology Suite grow more usable, practical, and sophisticated.

Help us plan the best Tech Congress yet by sharing what’s going on in your state, district, collaborative, or business. This pre-conference survey will equip us to curate relevant, useful, and engaging content as well as coordinate “Birds of a Feather” workgroups for deep dives on specific initiatives.

Use the form below to let us know:

Your Biggest Implementation Challenges
What issues are preventing you from advancing your data interoperability work? 

How You’re Innovating with Ed-Fi
Whether you’re a veteran or just getting started, what interesting and novel approaches are you using in your work?

 

 

Tech Congress: Pre-Conference Survey

Name

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Ed-Fi Alliance Recognizes Leaders Committed to Driving Results with Education Data at 2022 Community Awards https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2022/11/ed-fi-alliance-recognizes-leaders-committed-to-driving-results-with-education-data-at-2022-community-awards/ Tue, 08 Nov 2022 19:00:14 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9360 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2022 – AUSTIN, Texas – The Ed-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit organization and community of educators, technologists, and… Read more »

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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2022 – AUSTIN, Texas – The Ed-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit organization and community of educators, technologists, and advocates solving the data challenge in education, today announced the recipients of its sixth annual Community Awards. These awards recognize leaders in K-12 and higher education going above and beyond to impact student outcomes and success using data. Winners were announced live during Summit 2022, Ed-Fi’s annual user conference. 

Since 2017, Community Awards have highlighted individuals and organizations advocating for Ed-Fi’s mission to change the way education is delivered and support learners everywhere with connected data and interoperability. Winners are chosen from an open nomination process from the Ed-Fi Community and voted on by Ed-Fi’s Governance Advisory Team.

Awards are given in seven categories: Lifetime Achievement, Partner, Technical Contributor, Ambassador, Instructional Leader, Solution, and Rookie of the Year. The 2022 winners are: 

2022 Ed-Fi Lifetime Achievement Award 

Ed Comer, President and Founder, Student1

This award is given in recognition of outstanding and sustained contributions since the formation of the Ed-Fi Alliance, and represents an appreciation and acknowledgement of years of work towards growing the Ed-Fi Community. This winner advocates for education data standards, works towards better student outcomes leveraging data, and serves others with their expertise and knowledge. 

Ed Comer is a tireless advocate for the work of the Ed-Fi Alliance. Ed architected the first data model and left a lasting signature on the future of data use in K-12.  

 

2022 Partner of the Year

Ana Quintana, President and CEO, Crocus, LLC

This award recognizes a leader, technology provider, edtech company, or system integrator that has demonstrated a commitment to interoperability and the Ed-Fi Community by being a champion for data standards, a thoughtful partner for education agencies and a visionary in the use of data to improve outcomes for learners. 

Ana Quintana is dedicated to elevating the value proposition of Ed-Fi to education organizations and is a tireless supporter of interoperability in the K-12 and educator prep space. Ana and the Crocus team worked with users to implement the Educator Preparation Data Model (EPDM) at the state and local levels and create end-to-end solutions that help the community make use of the growing data model. Ana’s leadership, vision, and client-oriented disposition helps SEAs and EPPs achieve the results they need to improve their work.

In addition, as a Latina female executive, Ana is a dedicated advocate for advancing justice and equity with ethical data. Ana steers Crocus to be a force for good in the Ed-Fi community while leading every day with passion, humor, competence, and skill.

2022 Technical Contributor of the Year

Erik Joranlien, Data Engineer, Education Analytics

Nominees in this category have contributed to the technical work of the Ed-Fi Alliance, exhibited commitment to the Ed-Fi Data Standards, and  demonstrated collaborative efforts to help others within the Community.  

Erik Joranlien led the technical vision and implementation of Enable Data Union and Education Analytics’ Stadium product offering for Ed-Fi-based data warehousing. Erik has been involved with Ed-Fi for five years and continually seeks to understand the issues with existing analytics solutions while proposing visions for the future. In addition, he’s contributed to evolving tooling for importing data into Ed-Fi and the success of Ed-Fi implementations across partner districts, consortiums, and states.

 

2022 Ambassador of the Year

Debbie Dailey, Director of Strategic Projects, Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) 

This award spotlights a leader with a demonstrated commitment to the Ed-Fi Community who shares the benefits of interoperability with others outside the community. Nominees in this category are consistent advocates for the education technology sector, especially for non-technical audiences and for using data to impact teaching and learning. 

Debbie Dailey has been instrumental in Indiana’s Ed-Fi implementation and in shaping the broader state vision for ensuring data interoperability is achieved across K-12 and beyond. Debbie advocates for efficiency by working to minimize duplicate collections and processing while promoting maximum utilization of available resources. She oversaw a successful implementation and production run of Ed-Fi ODS/API at IDOE and led the effort with other state agencies on how they can use the ODS/API to streamline data collection from LEAs. 

 

2022 Educator Interoperability Leader of the Year

Dr. Alisa Taliaferro, Associate Dean of Quality Assurance and Graduate Programs, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University 

The Educator Interoperability Leader of the Year is an educator, instructional leader, or program personnel leading interoperability efforts within their organization. 

Dr. Alisa Taliaferro is the associate dean for quality assurance and graduate programs in the College of Education at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. She’s an educational assessment expert and has served as a national program evaluator to secure over 10.2 million dollars in sponsored funding to support graduate and undergraduate programs at the university. Dr. Taliaferro’s leadership and coordination with her central IT team continue to create opportunities to utilize the educator prep program (EPP) starter kit and plan for the future.

 

2022 Solution of the Year

Stadium, Education Analytics 

This award recognizes teams who have successfully solved significant education challenges with data and can demonstrate how they used it to support students. Nominees must have demonstrated they used an Ed-Fi Starter Kit or Solution Guide to solve an entrenched problem in education using data through the Ed-Fi Technology Suite. 

This year, Education Analytics launched Stadium, its analytics data warehouse product, in tandem with an open software community around the product offering called Enable Data Union. Stadium allows education agencies to share code, manage costs, and collaborate on ideas to develop further data warehousing and analytics solutions. The product also addresses a need that many education agencies have for an Ed-Fi API-powered, non-proprietary data warehouse solution that seamlessly integrates with other tools. Stadium has received the Ed-Fi API consumer badge and is part of the emerging solution stack for Boston, Denver, and South Carolina public schools. The Texas Education Exchange will pilot the solution during the 22-23 school year. 

2022 Rookie of the Year

Nandu Nair, Data Engineer, Walla Walla Public Schools

Rookie of the Year recognizes our newest participants that have demonstrated their commitment to data standards and interoperability by quickly ramping up on the technology and diving into their Ed-Fi implementation and engagement.  

Nandu Nair is a data engineer at Walla Walla Public Schools in Washington State. Nandu oversaw a fast and successful Ed-Fi ODS deployment and has an ongoing commitment to building out Ed-Fi’s presence in the Pacific Northwest. 

Congratulations to all of our 2022 Ed-Fi Community Award Winners, and thank you for all your meaningful work!

 

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Ed-Fi’s API is All You Need https://www.ed-fi.org/blog/2022/10/ed-fis-api-is-all-you-need/ Thu, 20 Oct 2022 02:49:25 +0000 https://www.ed-fi.org/?p=9350 The Beatles once said that love is all you need, but they never worked with Ed-Fi’s API to drive meaningful… Read more »

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The Beatles once said that love is all you need, but they never worked with Ed-Fi’s API to drive meaningful outcomes for learners everywhere.

Synonymous with the Ed-Fi data standard, the API is central to adoption and interoperability, though we tend to gravitate to Ed-Fi’s ODS database when it’s time to consider analytical questions. This was a sensible solution for a long time because most agencies are comfortable with databases and their tools and know how to access these and query them to answer their most pressing student questions.

There are three big downsides to an ODS-sourced analytical solution: 

  • It requires database access in addition to API access
  • The ODS is highly normalized, making it difficult to query
  • The ODS structure is not a defined data standard like the API

An ODS driven workflow looks something like this:

* It’s tempting to directly build analytics against the ODS to save a step but that is not recommended due to the potential performance impact.

The Ed-Fi API Strategy

What if we changed the workflow to fix the downsides mentioned above?  What if we used the Ed-Fi API for all the data out needs in addition to the data collection needs?  This new strategy could look something like:

In this second workflow, we can see that the ODS is only an appliance of the API and no one needs external access to it.  The API is the only thing needed to enable interoperability with source systems and all the downstream use cases.  

The API centric workflow is also helpful for any district using a managed service provider for their Ed-Fi implementation.  An API driven workflow improves scalability and data security.  Direct database access is hard to predict and optimize which makes performance and scalability difficult.

How does Ed-Fi API for Analytics work?

Analytics should always be built on top of a purpose-built data store.  Each data store can include the appropriate data organized in a way to answer the questions being asked.  This is why Ed-Fi supports an Analytics Middle Tier (AMT) to describe what the data might look like to satisfy the core use cases.  If we look at the diagrams above, you can see that the change in workflow is actually very minor.  Instructional leaders, Administrators, and researchers can still have their data organized for the tools they are familiar with.  The primary difference is how to configure the data store and manage the transformations needed from the API instead of the ODS.  Modern data architectures make this much easier with more robust tools that are well equipped to handle this new way of thinking. 

There is much more detail in Stephen Fuqua’s data lakes article on how to approach this.  Modern data lake architecture provides tools to orchestrate loading data lakes from APIs as well as refining the data to meet make the information readily available through common business intelligence tools.  Modern data architectures also make new manipulation possible like supporting multiple copies of the data tailored to each use case.  For example, the API could drive an AMT data set ready for Instructional leaders as well as an anonymized dataset ready for researchers.  

How do skillsets compare?

One of the main concerns about an API focused approach to Analytics is about the skillset we’ve already invested in.  Most analysts can continue to operate on top of this API sourced framework as well as or better than older approaches.  The difference between the strategies largely resides with the data engineer needs and IT requirements.  

Once you land the data into your data lake/data warehouse, your BI tools will function similarly.  This means that a majority of the analytics tools and resources you have in place can operate off an API driven solution just as easily as a database sourced solution.  

The main difference is how does your data lake/warehouse get set up and who maintains it.  The decision to configure a data lake and source it from the API will require a different set of tools.  Your vendor or IT staff may be familiar with the tools but they do differ a little.  Depending on your cloud/on-premise environment you will need some data orchestration to read the API and save the results into your data lake/warehouse environment.  

The API-sourced approach is best when leveraging cloud frameworks, although on-premise solutions do exist.  Purpose built solutions are also growing in the community.  Many of the managed service providers can also assist with analytical platforms along with their API environment hosting capabilities.  

What does the API mean for Ed-Fi’s Analytics Middle Tier?

Analytics Middle Tier (AMT) is a set of collections that describe the use cases driving the Ed-Fi data standard.  AMT is sourced from Ed-Fi’s Operational Data Store (ODS) and the Alliance will continue to maintain it as the database-sourced method for populating analytical data.  This method of sourcing data is still popular within the community.  

Ed-Fi is also working on a project to describe those same AMT use cases using Ed-Fi’s API.  This solution is to reaffirm that the API and data standard can drive all the use cases already outlined in AMT.

For anyone thinking about implementing AMT loaded via the API, you will quickly realize that it is dependent on your environment.  You may be using next-generation data warehouse tools from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Snowflake, or others.  Each provider has specific tools to make data storage from an API easy.  Ed-Fi’s reference architecture for API-to-AMT uses data lake style storage so that it can work  on-premises or on any cloud provider.  The importance is how you map the API’s output to the data standard’s use cases.  

Final Thoughts

The cloud providers have unlocked data storage in a new way.  We can now more directly access APIs to collect data and run complex analytics on it in extremely performant ways.  These tools unleashed a new wave of education focused analytics providers who leveraged these tools to revolutionize what is possible with Ed-Fi data.  Whether a district takes this in-house or leverages an existing analytics provider, the pipeline of education data is available.  We’re living in an exciting time for us data nerds out there.

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