A4L Community releases SIF Specification (North America) 3.4 supporting state needs of MA, VT and WA

WASHINGTON - Sept. 7, 2016 - PRLog -- Working with our membership, the North American Community has enhanced the current specification release and added new objects and elements to the Specification in support of existing SIF implementations and planned deployments across the United States.

Development of all SIF Specifications is Community-driven.  In consultation with Vermont, this release has been developed with State Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) in mind; in support of the great work underway in Washington State regarding Student Records Exchange (SRE), the SRE object now includes a full functional service; and, with the involvement of Massachusetts, the Community has started to address their migration requirements by including specific fields and non-normative mappings.  Several objects have been migrated and updated from the SIF 2 Specification series ensuring simplicity and flexibility, as well as aligning with the Common Education Data Standards (CEDS).  Additional object collections published within this release include Attendance, Data Warehouse, Grade Book, Human Resources and Student Record Exchange.  Updates have been made to existing object collections including Association, Learning, Management Information, Organization, Person and Student Record Exchange.

"We are delighted by the continued progress and technical expertise shown by the pK12 North American Community in driving the SIF standard forward in each specification release" states Larry Fruth II, PhD, Executive Director/CEO, A4L Community.  "This latest release shows the A4L Community's commitment to ensuring that end-users, not only school districts but regional and state education agencies, are provided with the latest open-source, community driven data model, and that they are truly focused on educational standards across the landscape.  Being the ONLY open technical blueprint developed by pK12 end user and product providers aligned to US Department of Education's Common Education Data Standards, technical leaders at all levels need to demand standardized ways to manage, move and use student data safely and securely."

The SIF Data Model Implementation Specification (North America) 3.4 can be found on the A4L website at https://www.A4L.org/Specification/Pages/North-America.aspx

About the Access 4 Learning Community

There is no other global community made up of educational policymakers, marketplace product and service providers and the customers they serve, collaborating daily to address real word learning information and resource issues.

The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, previously the SIF Association, is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively address all aspects of learning information management and access to support learning.  The A4L Community is "Powered by SIF" Specifications as its major technical tool to allow for this management and access simply, securely and in a scalable, standard way regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The Access 4 Learning Community has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit https://www.A4L.org