A4L Community and CEDS working together to optimize learning outcomes of special needs students

WASHINGTON - Sept. 20, 2016 - PRLog -- The A4L Community has done extensive work over the past 12 months to develop a list of elements for individual students IEP, and to assist Washington State in the development of IEP in xPress Student Record Exchange (SRE) as part of their 'on the ground' implementation.  We are delighted that the IEP work has been recognized by the CEDS Community as an area of particular development interest.  As such the A4L Community will be supporting the on-going work at the inaugural CEDS IEP Elements Workgroup meeting being held on September 29, 2016 and subsequent meetings into 2017.  All CEDS IEP workgroup sessions will be conducted through a series of discussions, virtual meetings and documents shared on CEDS workspace.

"There are two parts of a data model: syntax and semantics, form and meaning. Working with the A4L Community, we have made great progress toward identifying Special Ed/IEP data elements and are working on implementation of formal XML syntax" states TQ White II, Senior Programmer, Central Minnesota Educational Research and Development Council (cmERDC) and A4L Community Special Ed/IEP workgroup Lead.  "I am tremendously excited to have CEDS community bring its expertise in the semantics of education data to bear on this effort. Their efforts will bring clarity to the meaning of the data model elements.  As an education technologist, their participation makes me even more optimistic that the Special Ed/IEP data model will provide another great example of the benefits of data portability by improving the ability of schools to optimize the learning outcomes of their special needs students."

If you would like to participate, or would like access to view the workgroup in the CEDS Community, please send an email to duane.brown@aemcorp.com requesting access.  Information can also be found on the A4L website: https://www.a4l.org/Events/Pages/CEDS_IEP_2016_09_29.aspx

To find out more about xPress Student Record Exchange (SRE), please visit https://xpressapi.org

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

About Common Education Data Standards (CEDS)

The Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) is a specified set of the most commonly used education data elements to support the effective exchange of data within and across states, as students transition between educational sectors and levels, and for federal reporting. This common vocabulary will enable more consistent and comparable data to be used throughout all education levels and sectors necessary to support improved student achievement. The standards are being developed by NCES with the assistance of a CEDS Stakeholder Group that includes representatives from states, districts, institutions of higher education, state higher education agencies, early childhood organizations, federal program offices, interoperability standards organizations, and key education associations and non-profit organizations. CEDS is a voluntary effort and will increase data interoperability, portability, and comparability across states, districts, and higher education organizations.  For further information, please visit https://ceds.ed.gov/