Wednesday, April 11, 2018

3:45 PM  - 4:45 PM

Assessment Data Exchange via REST API

Ballroom AB

The Alliance recently released a draft specification for REST API-based assessment data exchange and an accompanying certification. This session will review the materials and gather community feedback.

These broad session notes attempt to capture the spirit of the discussion and should not be interpreted as a transcript. Although Ed-Fi Alliance staff were involved in capturing these observations, the notes below should not be construed as official, complete, or 100% accurate.


Field/community update


  • NWEA MAP assessments will be certified to Ed-Fi API August 2018 and working with beta customers soon after that

    • NWEA value proposition:

      • Value in the ed-Fi spec let them deliver results asap. As soon as they are available.

      • Also want to put the results data into customers’ data visualizations

      • January 2019 will be their official broad launch.

  • McGraw Hill

    • Recently signed Project unicorn

    • Aligned with IMS Global Learning Consortium® on content standards

    • Valuable to MGH and customers to support data standards via Ed-Fi and content standards via IMS Global Learning Consortium®

    • Equity and access mission drives them to provide interoperability supports to agencies (e.g effective, current data to support all learners)

Learnings from Effective Assessment Data Management (EADM) Collaborative


What are the Essential Assessment Questions?


Share out activity from TC session attendees:


  • Content knowledge

  • What gaps in understanding do my learners have?

  • Subject comprehension

  • Level of competency on a topic

  • Deficits of mastery

  • Help teachers identify which content areas they should reteach if there’s a wide lack of comprehension

  • Level of understanding

  • Trend toward accomplishing the goal

  • Program evaluations

  • measure /assessment growth mindset

  • How are teachers impacting student learning

  • Growth over time

  • Lexile scores

Categories that came from the EADM essential questions


  • Accountability

  • Academic planning

  • Program evaluation

  • Instruction and student support decisions

  • Resources

  • Strategic planning and school improvement

  • Teacher effectiveness

Share pain points / challenges in assessment data in your implementation


  • Challenge exists that the data you’re providing may not be used correctly by end users. Assessment vendors’ challenge is to make this simple/simpler. The end goal is to put the data into end users’ hands ASAP when it is most valuable, and intuitive/simple enough to make ready use of it.

    • Response: that’s why this assessment data model is so metadata-heavy - to be able to contextualize the data well enough for end users to make use of the data, and for vendors to be able to support providing it in standard ways (structure and via API)

    • Also, value proposition to vendors that standard, API-driven data increases the quality and value of their offerings.

  • Districts own their data. It’s not stuck or locked up in a siloed system.

    • Need to see it in context with other data for a full 360 understanding of students.

  • Data structures that are proprietary may be changed sometimes without visibility to end users/customers.

    • Standard addresses and helps prevent/protect this from occurring.

  • Synchronicity/synchronizing problems between agency and assessment platform provider. Student mobility and other challenges result in rostering data that are very out of date, inaccurate, etc.

    • UNLESS you’ve got the ability to securely exchange transactional data via API and in a standard, structured way.

Other Discussion Items:


  • Assessment data domain is not dependent on every other part of the data model - just student.

  • Documentation for the Assessment Spec is located here: https://techdocs.ed-fi.org/display/EFDSRFC/ED-FI+RFC+8+-+ASSESSMENT+OUTCOMES+MANAGEMENT+API

  • Silvia will share with attendees:

  • Rick Rozzelle & EADM feedback - schedule conversations with assessment vendors in addition to sending the letter & ask

  • Per McGraw-Hill, we don’t do interop & standards to do them - connect it to the problem to be solved and the actual educational use cases

  • An ask: could we have a technical congress just focused on assessment?!