Software Aims To Simplify EDEN Reporting

• By Scott Aronowitz
• 04/15/09

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In an era when schools are scrambling for public funds wherever they can find them, and when the 2009 ARRA stimulus package is allowing the United States Department of Education to provide funds like never before, the critical thread tying them together is data reporting.

In order to qualify for a great deal of available monies from ED, including a special $5 billion competitive fund set aside for schools that show exemplary progress, schools and districts must demonstrate compliance with a number of standards set by the department. To do this, they must submit a substantial number of comprehensive categorical data reports to the ED's Education Data Exchange Network, or EDEN.

No easy assignment, generating all the reports required by EDEN, but eScholar, a White Plains, NY-based educational data management company, is now offering a report generation application that may be up to the task. Complete Data Warehouse extracts, aggregates, organizes and charts all EDEN-pertinent data on a school or district network, and then generates all required reports.

A critical component of what is known as the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process is the ability to read data from a variety of different databases with widely varying formats. The eScholar application includes the feature ETL Data Transformation and Loading, which, among other functions, locates inconsistencies and duplicate records, translates code, allows validation, allows correction of consistent errors, and matches data to appropriate domains for more accurate query results.

A spokesperson for eScholar said the CDW will save time, confusion, and aggravation by allowing users, and the states that require their reports, to focus on the content and quality of the data rather than the mechanics and minutiae of producing the reports manually.