Ed-Fi 1.1 Request for Comment Webinar 2Adam Miller - adam.miller@msdf.orgMichael & Susan Dell Foundation

Audio lines are muted during the presentationPlease use the chat box to type your questions

Webinar Logistics

• Introduce yourself– Type your name and organization in the chat box. You

can send text to All Participants or to the speaker.

• All questions/comments welcome!

• We will stop occasionally toanswer chat questions.

• The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation was established in 1999 to help improve the lives of children in need around the world. The Ed-Fi initiative supports children's access to quality education in public schools, one of the foundation’s key objectives.

• Ed-Fi is based on input from state and local education agencies and vendors. Ed-Fi is governed by foundation representatives working with an advisory council of education agency representatives from states that opt to implement the standard.

• The Ed-Fi standard is vendor-neutral and does not require any specific vendor’s hardware or software.

RFC Goals

• Solicit feedback to keep Ed-Fi useful and easy to adopt

• Discover potential errors, problems, or compatibility issues

• Provide the public portal to capture feedback at https://discussions.zoho.com/ed-fi

• Most importantly, tell us missing Ed-Fi data elements that you need.

Contributor helpful attributes

• In a technical role • Dealing with student data• Familiar with:– XML– Data dictionaries– Database schemas– ETL processes

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 5

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 6

Ed-Fi Web site provides free licensing

News Updates

• RFC period officially launched from now until September 27th last call for changes

• Ed-Fi 1.1 RFC schema posted on www.ed-fi.org technical documentation section

• Most importantly, tell us missing Ed-Fi data elements that you need.

RFC Conference ScheduleAugust 1st to September 26th

• 8/29 - 12-1pm Central• 9/11 - 12-1pm Central• 9/26 - 12-1pm Central• 9/27 - RFC phase wrap up - Last call for

changes• 9/30 - RFC phase lockdown• TBD Ed-Fi Advisory Council meeting

to confirm proposed changes• TBD Ed-Fi v1.1 Release Announcement

What is the Ed-Fi solution?

• CEDS-aligned toolkit for K-12 student data• Four main parts

– Metrics - Detailed documentation for student performance metrics

– XML schema - Domain types, interchanges and extensions

– Dashboards - Free source code for quality student level dashboards

– ETL code - Moving data between an ODS and a dashboard database

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 9

Ed-Fi aligned to CEDS

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 10

Ed-Fi in the CEDS alignment tool

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 11

Ed-Fi in a typical environment

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 12

Ed-Fi Discussion Forumhttps://discussions.zoho.com/ed-fi

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 13

Github repository for Ed-Fi licensees

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 14

Ed-Fi source code in Visual Studio 2010

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 15

Running dashboards on local desktop

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 16

Ed-Fi 1.1 Goals

• Continued alignment with CEDS - v2.0• Real-use feedback from the community

– Texas, Delaware, Colorado– Shared Learning Collaborative (North Carolina, New York,

Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts)

• Integrate other related efforts– Shared Learning Collaborative– LRMI– Harvard Strategic Data Project

• Address a backlog of upgrades, feedback and fixes• Incorporate disruptive changes now to ease

adoption for the long term

Ed-Fi 1.1 What’s New

• Continued CEDS alignment• Increased Common Core support• New Domain: Interventions• Person generalization• Mostly optional Ed-Fi XML schema• Optional core updates for REST• ID/IDREFS and ReferenceTypes• Descriptors

© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 18

Continued CEDS alignment

• Incorporated K-12 additions as appropriate

• Note: CEDS 2.0 incorporated many Ed-Fi 1.1 elements and enumerations

• Re-aligned enumerations that changed in 2.0

• Assessments and Learning standards

• Deferred - Early Childhood and Postsecondary

extensions

• Deferred - Areas where CEDS 3.0 is still fluid© 2011 Michael & Susan Dell Foundation 19

Common Core Support

• LearningObjectives organize the levels of the standards– Reflect the Common Core Sections and Strands

• LearningStandards reflect the individual standards to be taught– Learning Standards can be decomposed into lower level

standards by organizations

• Assessments, Courses, GradebookEntries, and Intervention Content may be linked with LearningObjectives and LearningStandards

New Domain: Interventions

• Intervention - action taken with one student or a

cohort of students

• InterventionPrescription - published blueprint for

the intervention

• EducationContent - Link with metadata (or LRMI

metadata) to content linked to the Intervention or InterventionPrescription

• InterventionStudy - Link with metadata to published

research on the effectiveness of an intervention

• InterventionEffectiveness - Effectiveness by

student for an intervention

Person Generalization

• Person added as the generalization for

Student, Staff and Parent

• CEDS has a Person-Role-Organization model

– Ed-Fi already has associations for the roles (e.g.,

StudentSchoolAssociation)

• Optional PersonUniqueStateId supports

states that have a single Id across all Persons

Mostly optional Ed-Fi XML schema

• Transactional use of the XML schemas requires more flexibility– Partial updates would only provide changed

elements– Supports the new REST interface under

development

• Users need to make sure key elements are mandatory in the interchanges

• A few elements remain mandatory– Association “ends” – Where absolutely required for “keys”

ID/IDREFS and ReferenceTypes

• ReferenceTypes support references to entities and associations already loaded or within the same XML file– 1.1 will have a full complement of Reference

Types– Separates concepts of key reference from

lookup on other attributes

• ID/IDREFS support references to entities and associations within the same XML file

Removed anonymous numeric type definitions

• Anonymous numeric types were replaced with named numeric types to allow proper restriction for customization.[48]– BellSchedule – WeeksInCycle– Course - NumberOfParts – CourseTranscript - GradeEarned– Grade – GradeEarned– GradingPeriod –TotalInstructionDays– MeetingTime – WeekNumber– ReportCard - NumberOfDaysAbsent, NumberOfDaysInAttendance,

NumberOfDaysTardy – Section - SequenceOfCourse

StudentGradebookEntry – GradeEarned– AdditionalCredits – Credit– Address – StreetNumberName– Credits – Credit– GradePointAverage - GPA

Descriptors

• Enumeration dilemma– Code lists standardized within the xsd– States use different code lists and change as

education laws and policies change– Using codes (01, 02,..) versus short descriptions

• Descriptors– Moves enumerations from xsd into data (descriptor)

to support enumerations that can align with those defined and published by a State or other organization

Descriptors

• Support references by either code or short description

• Effective dates to model change over time

• Can link to prior descriptor for longitudinal analysis

• Linked to a namespace that defines their scope

• Most map a to common denominator of enumerations to support analysis across states

Defining an enumeration vs. descriptor

<xs:simpleType name="GraduationPlanType"><xs:restriction base="xs:token">

<xs:enumeration value="Minimum"/><xs:enumeration value="Recommended"/><xs:enumeration value="Distinguished"/>

</xs:restriction></xs:simpleType>

With enums, values are fixed in the xsd

With descriptors, values are defined in data, in an xml file<GraduationPlanTypeDescriptor namespace=”http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/weds/index.html?Code=C062”>

<CodeValue>27</CodeValue><ShortDescription>Minimum<ShortDescription><LongDescription>Minimum High School Program

TAC Chapter 74, revised September 1, 2005; including TAC §89.1070(b)(2) for students receiving special education services, revised August 1, 2002.(for students who entered grade 9 in 2007-2008 and thereafter)</LongDescription>

<EffectiveBeginDate>2007-09-30</EffectiveBeginDate></GraduationPlanDescriptor>

Assigning values to enumeration vs. descriptor

<GraduationPlan>… <GraduationPlanType>Recommended</GraduationPlanType>…</GraduationPlan>

With enumerations:

With descriptors:<GraduationPlan>… <GraduationPlanType namespace=”http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teds/index.html?Code=C062”>

<CodeValue>28</CodeValue> </GraduationPlanType>…</GraduationPlan>

<GraduationPlan>… <GraduationPlanType namespace=”http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teds/index.html?Code=C062”>

<ShortDescription>Recommended</ShortDescription> </GraduationPlanType>…</GraduationPlan>

Next Steps

1. Expect an invite for the next Web conference.

2. Please invite your peers to these webinars!

3. Don’t be shy to ask questions here or through the Ed-Fi discussion portal.