The Access 4 Learning Community Formalizes Its Common Education Data Standards Technical Support

WASHINGTON - Feb. 22, 2017 - PRLog -- The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community's North American Management Board of Directors has approved the new Data Model SIF Specification Development Process.  A major change in this policy and procedures draft is the formal acknowledgement reiterating A4L's now three-year commitment to support and parallel development to NCES's Common Education Data Standards (CEDS).

"The A4L Community has been a major contributor to the CEDS initiative since its inception including providing original data model framework, technical support and community engagement" states Peter Tamayo, OSPI Assistant Superintendent/CIO at State of Washington.  "Since 2011 the Management Board has directed the Community to align the SIF Implementation Specification development with CEDS maturation.  This draft officially acknowledges this aligned development and is now a formal part of our policies and procedures for schools, states, and marketplace providers."

CEDS does not standardize how the various data "silos" located within the State or District transfer their data to and from diverse sources.  The SIF Implementation Specification (North America) 3.x defines a dynamic application-to-application data transfer framework, which is secure, robust, and fully CEDS-compatible architected to incorporate the CEDS Logical Data Model.  This means that the SIF 3.x Specifications support data management from Early Childhood to K12 to Higher Education to workforce, as well as support for other important data initiatives.

"Establishing a process for their data model development that has explicit steps through which the A4L North American Community continues to ensure both alignment with CEDS and their community's active participation in the further development of CEDS provides a great model for all developers and organizations on what it looks like to adopt CEDS", states Ross Santy, Associate Commissioner Administrative Data Division, NCES.

Next week at the A4L Annual Meeting, a session will be held outlining the creation of a "connector'" to the developing CEDS Normalized Data Schema (NDS) model.  "Vertical interoperability" is nothing new for the SIF Standard, however tying the payloads that make that interaction possible to a particular, at rest; database schema is something generally left to vendors. An openly accessible CEDS centered operational data store (ODS), when combined with SIF 3.x Infrastructure Specification, should collect data, generate reports, and simplify vertical reporting to become a natural stepping-stone for other states to enable vertical reporting.

More information on the SIF Infrastructure Specifications can be found at: http://www.a4l.org/page/Infrastructure

The Specification Data Model Development Process document can be found at: http://www.a4l.org/page/DataModel


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 http://www.A4L.org

About the Common Education Data Standards

The Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) is an education data management initiative whose purpose is to streamline the understanding of data within and across P-20W institutions and sectors.  The CEDS initiative includes a common vocabulary, data models, that reflect that vocabulary, tools to help education stakeholders understand and use education data, an assembly of metadata from other education data initiatives, and a community of education stakeholders who discuss the uses of CEDS and the development of the standard.  For further information, visit https://ceds.ed.gov.