New Initiatives Aim to Make School Data Interoperable

• 04/22/13

Have you ever had a leaky faucet that would not stop dripping, that broke your concentration, or kept you awake as you waited for the next drop to fall? That drip is annoying, but it isn't as bad as the DRIP we have right now in education. Time and again, I have heard educators talk about schools suffering from a DRIP, because they are data rich, information poor.

This pithy acronym refers to the idea that schools now have the capability to gather an enormous amount of information about students, teachers, and innumerable aspects of school and district performance through their student information system, gradebooks, assessment systems, and other sources. In other words, they are "data rich." But these systems rarely, if ever, talk to each other to exchange, coordinate, or integrate the data and report that integrated data in a way that is actionable by anyone. That's what makes these same schools "information poor."

To use a technical term, there is no interoperability among educational data systems. The good news is that more than a dozen initiatives are under way to help solve the DRIP dilemma by creating standards for describing data and transferring it among different systems. Many of these projects sound like the proverbial alphabet soup--CEDS, LRMI, SIF, Ed-Fi--but don't be surprised if you haven't heard of them.

Iwan Streichenberger, CEO of inBloom, an initiative that officially launched at SXSWedu in Austin, TX, in March, says these data initiatives are like the plumbing behind your systems: They are creating standards to define the key elements in the education system, then establishing protocols for how to transport them (and in many cases, use and display them).

But if data initiatives are simply plumbing, should you really care about them? The short answer is yes, you should, because these frameworks can change the lives of students, teachers, administrators, and parents. If these initiatives work as intended, the mantra will be, "Enter once, use many times."

To help technology leaders understand the various data initiatives, the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has written a white paper that explains each of them as well as how they overlap and intersect. We sort them into three sometimes overlapping categories: The first category covers initiatives that provide consistent data definitions; the second, those that facilitate the sharing of information across systems; and the third category encompasses the search, discovery, and alignment of resources. The data might look like this: 

When Jonatha(n) moves, it's  important that his crucial biographical information is shared correctly. The different data fields ("gender" versus "sex," in this case) need to be calibrated from one system to the next if data is to be transferred easily and quickly. Otherwise we are talking about manual data entry to deal with the inconsistencies. Imagine the staff hours to handle the transfer of 200 students, all with various data permutations. In plumbing terms, the pipes don't all need to be identical, but they do need to fit together so that everyone is drinking from the same well.

Keeping Data Flowing
While some initiatives describe data, others, those we group in the second category, move standardized data among systems. Continuing the example above, let's assume that the data describing Jonathan is made consistent through one of the data-description protocols. But there's still a problem: District A uses one student information system and gradebook, while District B uses different applications. How do the districts ensure that Jonathan's data moves accurately? That's where data-sharing initiatives come in. They provide rules that enable data to travel among applications without first having to be transformed in some way.

Two of the projects in this category, Ed-Fi and inBloom, also provide additional functionality, such as facilitating the reporting of data through dashboards.

Tapping Into Information

One element of LRMI is assigning metatags to information so a teacher will know not only the standard to which that a piece of content is tied, but also the type of content it is (movie, jpeg, etc.) so that it can be used most effectively. Metatagging also helps teachers and districts share information, lesson plans, and other resources.

Once a framework for finding resources is in place, initiatives such as GIM-CCSS come into play, with the goal of mapping digital content or assessment items to the Common Core State Standards as well as other state standards.

Avoiding Leaks
If all of these initiatives are just plumbing, though, why should CTOs act on them? Well, in the same way a bad plumbing job leads to insidious leaks that can undermine the integrity of your home, faulty information systems can hurt your district.

To achieve instructional integrity, your district needs to have policies that require any new software purchases to work together so that the data they carry moves smoothly and easily among programs. Remember, the goal is "enter once, use many times." Writing Requests for Proposals that take interoperability into account may seem like extra work for already overburdened CTOs, but it will pay off when the new systems are implemented.

When you choose a data system--say inBloom for data movement--you should not have to worry if it's compatible with other comparable systems. Thus, if your district is committed to, say, the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), a category two initiative that seeks to provide a common language to securely transport data among applications, then the software you invest in should be, too.

I asked Sharren Bates, chief product officer of inBloom, "If a CTO asks for inBloom compatibility, does he also have to ask for SIF compliance?" She said no, because inBloom has a "SIF adapter" that will ensure that any SIF-compliant software works with inBloom. Not all these initiatives are so friendly with each other, but they are trending more and more in that direction.

District technology leaders need to start requiring that any software company they work with helps ensure that their data can be turned into actionable information. Ask vendors what standards and initiatives they are familiar with, and which ones their products are compatible with.

The more we can raise awareness of these initiatives within all areas of the education data ecosystem, the faster the benefits will accrue to students, teachers, CTOs, and parents--and the faster we can get rid of that infernal DRIP.