For decades now, the administrators and the educators have been working hard and typing data into various databases, software and systems. One system is used for rostering information, and then you have another for behavior data and other for curriculum and assessment. The list seems to go on.
Currently, the education data systems were actually cut off from another person and unable to paint a complete picture of what was taking place within the classroom. Well, that’s when the edfi data standard comes into action for solving the issues from their core.
The Ed-Fi Data standard is primarily targeted to be the set of practical rules, designed for collecting, managing and further organizing educational data. It will allow various systems to share their said information within an actionable and seamless manner.
Focusing on the value of data standard:
Well, here, the data standard will actually define some rules on how data needs to be formatted and then exchanged between multiple systems. Up until now, every education technology used to have its own language for managing and storing data,
- The language of one educational tool was completely different from the next one. That made integration quite impossible to say the least.
- The student information system could not talk to learn management system, which then cannot talk to assessment software and the chain goes on.
- So, as a result, the educators, even to this date, are unable to get complete view into student’s needs and all the necessary challenges to cover. Data gets siloed and becomes less useful.
- After drawing from a wide team of educatorsfrom multiple states and districts, Ed-Fi Data standard crafted the premier data standard for all the K-12 school districts along with the state agencies.
- Now, this standard is widely used by some real educators and further tested out by the real schools in question.
- The service is field-proven, elegance when it comes to design and further scalable. That makes the Ed-Fi Data standard the main reason to boost student achievement and also focusing on the teacher satisfaction.
- Without proper Ed-Fi Data standard, educators might have to limit insights into what is currently working, what is not going up to the standard and ways to tell the difference between these two options.
Why focusing on Ed-Fi Data standard only?
Whenever you consider the major volume of data alongside factoring in multiple systems needed to house the same, the main role of standards to regulate management gets a lot clearer. The Ed-Fi Data standard makes it really possible these days to speak that “common language” everyone wants to hear.
- It is true that Ed-Fi Data standard helps in managing data over its entire lifetime.
- Right from the initial creation to making data useful and further retaining records long-term, Ed-Fi Data standard is always the best to consider these days.
Easy way to gather data:
Before the Ed-Fi Data standard came into action, each system teachers used to track down the progress of the students using their own methods of storing their data. The practice software cannot report to the grading software, which then couldn’t report to student information system. Sometimes, school data pros would get crafty with the .csv file and were not able to upload files of information that needs to be stored by different systems.
- As Ed-Fi Data standard provides school with the common language to use, data will be seamlessly transferred between multiple systems using APIs.
- This will free schools to use the best ever tools for various jobs while being able to gather all the major student data under one single record within student information systems.
- So, this method is perfect for eliminating all kinds of data silos.
- Furthermore, the same idea of Ed-Fi Data standard will cut down on the time that people actually spent on re-entering data manually.
Perfect for organizing data as well:
The next best step in the current data lifecycle will need the school leaders to decide on how the different data needs to be stored. It will change with the students progressing to various schools and then move on to graduation.
- Some records need to be retailed for specified number of years and even for indefinitely.
- With technology evolving, standards will do the same as well.
- Most schools have their records stored on microfilm, in paper form, in online databases and in microfiche.
- The Ed-Fi Data standards will mean that moving forward; the permanent records of the students will remain accessible, even when the technology seems to change, especially with microfiche and microfilm.
So, next time you are planning to get improved technology for the student data information, focusing on Ed-Fi Data standard will be the best goal you could have possibly asked for.
