Integrating APIs from various sources to standardize data flows for Student Record Exchange

WASHINGTON - Oct. 19, 2016 - PRLog -- Working together, A4L Community Members Puget Sound Education Service District (PSESD), Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and CedarLabs are making the idea of real-time, secure student records transfer a reality.

When a student moves to a new school, the critical information often arrives weeks late, meaning lost instructional time and limited information for critical decision-making. Sending and receiving these data is an administrative burden, so those data that do follow the student are usually just a subset of the overall picture of the student, often sent via insecure and inefficient means such as fax, post or email.  With annual mobility rates of 25-55% in many states, the scope of this problem, its direct cost to schools, and its long term cost to communities have brought increasing attention to these issues.

Fortunately, technology now exists to solve this problem… As a member of the A4L Community, the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) led the creation of an open standard, called xPress Student Record Exchange (xPress SRE), to ensure a replicable, interoperable solution.  The goal was not just to solve the immediate need, but to make sure that the education community would gain a controllable and an easy-to-implement architecture standard for finding and transferring student records electronically between any two education entities.  By leveraging CedarLabs' (a Minnesota-based technology company) simple to use and efficient data integration platform which uses A4L's SIF standard and offers a robust and secure workflow for Student Record Exchange (SRE), the SRE process can be extended to districts using either SIF backend or an Ed-Fi backend Student Information System (SIS).  For SISs implementing Ed-Fi, this integration looks no different than making a typical Ed-Fi call.  By integrating with the two most popular open APIs used by SISs, and leveraging the power of the SIF data model and SRE process flow, the benefits of using xPress SRE are extended as widely as possible.

Peter Tamayo, Chief Information Officer, OSPI noted "States like Washington need flexible and open technology solutions in education to help improve student achievement. The walls between the standards developing organizations are coming down as states and districts demand cooperation in the marketplace. The SRE is a great example of we can work together to benefit students."

The xPress SRE standard tracks the status of moving a student's full record from an authorized 'data provider' (i.e. the school district which the student has just left) to an authorized 'data consumer' (i.e. the school district where the student is now educated). No records can be obtained without the appropriate access permission being granted by a representative of the data provider, thereby ensuring that all personal information is kept secure. There is also a 'Student Locator Service' which can be used to find a specific student, in order to start the process of requesting transfer of the student record. All of this functionality is leveraged using the SIF standard, and powered by the Cedar Labs' data integration platform.

In the Puget Sound Education Service District (PSESD), schools are able to leverage the xPress SRE API to also provide access to student data for its own custom-developed software application called Student Success Link.  This application allows Community Based Organizations (such as Boys and Girls Clubs) to have access to real-time student data for kids participating in their programs securely and cost-effectively.

To read the Case Study: Student Records Exchange and integrating APIs - please visit https://www.A4L.org/NewsRoom/Pages/Success-Stories.aspx

For more information on xPress SRE, please visit: https://xpressapi.org/user-examples/xpress-student-record-exchange/


About the Access 4 Learning Community
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 Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI)
The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is the primary agency charged with overseeing K-12 public education in Washington state. OSPI works with the state's 295 school districts to administer basic education programs and implement education reform on behalf of more than one million public school students. For more information, please visit: http://www.k12.wa.us

About CedarLabs
CedarLabs was founded by Mike Reynolds, President, and David Boardman, CFO, to develop software systems for education that enhance accessibility and provide rapid transfer of data through cost effective and easy to manage tools.  To find out more, please visit: http://www.cedarlabs.com

About Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD)
The Puget Sound Educational Service District (PSESD) is one of nine regional educational agencies serving school district and state-approved private schools in Washington. The PSESD provides many direct services to students, in addition to strengthening the educators, school districts, and educational communities that support these students.  To find out more see: https://www.psesd.org