Today, the Ed-Fi Alliance announced the release of the Ed-Fi Data Standard Version 2.0 with data integration features designed to help agencies scale individualized instruction from student to district. Licensed in 24 US states and more than half of US districts, the CEDS aligned Ed-Fi Data Standard serves as the foundation for enabling interoperability among secure K-12 education data systems across the nation, improving student achievement and teacher satisfaction.
Since its launch in 2011, adoption of the Ed-Fi Data Standard has maintained rapid growth. In the first quarter of 2015, the total number of Ed-Fi licensed organizations increased by more than 12%, due in large part to interest from Ed-Tech vendors and education agencies. Mainstream market adoption and commitment of this scale has now expanded the standard to incorporate more than 75 changes and improvements.
A summary of the Ed-Fi Data Standard 2.0 improvements include:
- Alignment with CEDS Version 5.0
- Enhanced support for competency based learning models
- Simplified methods for recording student attendance
- New organization types that better describe relationships between education entities
- Support for complex school term calendars
- New features that improve system maintenance and upgrade support
Improvements like these are having a real impact for members of the Ed-Fi community.
“The rate of change in education technology is rapidly increasing. We need something that breaks the lengthy cycle of evaluating, acquiring, integrating, and piloting these tools,” said Josh Klein, Portland Public Schools’ Chief Information Officer. “We need to implement new instructional tools in weeks that easily populate with learner profile and class roster information in order accelerate gains in student performance – Ed-Fi Data Standard 2.0 holds this promise.”
Also included in the data standard are development guidelines for an Application Programming Interface (API) that enables applications to read and write education data through a secure interface. The guidelines include advanced security features and flexible methods for moving data in order to quickly and easily bring other Ed-Fi compliant systems and applications online. Improvements like these are having a real impact for members of the Ed-Fi community.
“As a significant contributor to this generation of Ed-Fi technology, we’re expecting game changing possibilities for teachers and students in Tennessee, from creating efficiencies in daily operations that allow more time for instruction to stronger diagnostics that offer more targeted support,” said Sam Pearcy, Director of First to the Top for the Tennessee DOE. “The education landscape is hungry for the integration and sharing of technology to make it stronger, and we are lucky to play an active role in a community of leaders across the US making this a reality in Tennessee.”
With strong industry adoption of the Common Education Data Standards (CEDS), Ed-Fi technology continues to align with the most recent version of this vocabulary. The Ed-Fi Data Standard 2.0 and CEDS version 5.0 have both been improved to align in the areas of charter schools, disability documentation, and assessment domains.
The Ed-Fi Data Standard 2.0 helps districts and states in their role as data stewards to access information one place, in a familiar format, and under their own control. This approach is giving administrators and educators the freedom to select the best tools for the job and support student paths through learning that are right for them.
For more details of the features and functionality included in the Ed-Fi Data Standard 2.0, visit Ed-Fi Tech Docs.
