A4L Community proud to publish data exchange standard with support for IEPs

WASHINGTON - Dec. 19, 2017 - PRLog -- Responding to the growing needs in the management and usage of educational data, the Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community has released the collaboratively developed SIF Data Model Implementation Specification (North America) 3.5, which now provides added support for Individualized Education Plans for students with special needs.  This work has been developed in tandem with the National Center for Education Statistic's Common Education Data Standards (CEDS).

This release is the result of a two-year, volunteer-led effort by members of the A4L Community and help from national experts in special education and data modeling. It is the best example of collaboration across the education sector and gives true meaning to our 'Community-driven' approach and core values.  The effort is motivated by the recognized need to make a student's individualized education plan (IEP) content available when a student transfers into a new school.

This latest release is intended to support three main use cases:
    •  Immediate support for an administrator the very first time a student shows up in a new school,
    •  Information to support the special education team as they adapt plans already in place to the resources and strategies of the receiving school, and
    •  Sufficient information for schools and districts to support reporting and resource management needs.
The goal is to ensure that a school has the information needed to provide students having special needs with critical, ongoing services.

"Having family members in the field actively supporting students on IEP's, and two of my own children on individual plans, this technical blueprint for a standardized approach for IEP's in marketplace products can only help streamline IEP development, utilization and transfer which will support better learning," touts Dr. Larry Fruth II, A4L's Executive Director/CEO.  "IEPS are difficult to develop and manage now for identified students when in reality every student should have an individualized education plan for success."

Developed though a 20-year established, open processes by member volunteers driven by end user, not vendor, needs.  Schools and states need to require marketplace products to use Community developed technical standards and not proprietary mechanisms for data exchanges which locks them into applications and raise costs in the long term.  All stakeholders involved in the development of IEP's should demand a standardized approach to their development.  Find out SIF RFP language support here: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.a4l.org/resource/collection/7F785EA1-9AC7-4081-8DCC-3287AFA6675F/SIF_RFP_Language.pdf

To review the SIF Data Model Implementation Specification (North America) 3.5, please visit: http://www.A4L.org/page/DataModelNA

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 http://www.A4L.org