What's New - Overview

This section provides a general overview of the improvements, enhancements, fixes, and changes that appear in v3.0 of the Ed-Fi Data Standard. 

Data Model Improvements and Enhancements

Several changes to the data model were made to improve and enhance capabilities for implementers. Significant changes include:

• A change to the natural key structure of the Section and Grading Period entities to remove volatility
• Removal of enumerations from the model
• Changes to the Bell Schedule domain to support complex scheduling requirements and to fix an issue in the v2.0 model
• Additional support for modeling contact information for staff 
• Removal of the Assessment Family entity to reduce confusion, and simplification of the means to capture information on related assessments 
• Additions to the Staff Credential and Credential entities to model instructor qualifications

Additional detail and rationale for the changes discussed can be found in the following sections of this documentation.

Continued CEDS Alignment

The Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) initiative is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies, state education agencies, local education agencies, private foundations, and vendors. CEDS produces a common vocabulary for education data, thereby streamlining data exchange and facilitating comparison across institutions and sectors. The Ed-Fi Alliance has participated in the CEDS initiative since the Alliance's inception, and the Ed-Fi Data Model has contained CEDS-aligned elements since v1.1.

In July 2016, CEDS v6.0  and was released and in July 2017, CEDS v7.0 was released. Several elements and concepts were adopted.

Changes to the Ed-Fi Extension Framework

The Ed-Fi Extension Framework provides specific patterns implementers can use to customize the Ed-Fi Data Model while still retaining conformance to the Ed-Fi Data Standards. The patterns used to extend implementations have been revised substantially. The principal change is that the v3.0 extensibility model requires namespaces for all extensions to the model. The What's New - Major Changes section of this documentation details this change.

In addition, changes to the set of supported Extensions were made. Ed-Fi Data Standard v2.0 guidance allowed customizations in the field that proved problematic for implementers, particularly client systems. For example, v2.0 allowed required elements in the Ed-Fi Data Standard to be removed from an implementation. As another example, elements defined as optional could be changed to be required by an implementation.

The Ed-Fi Extension Framework guidance has been changed in v3.0 to remove a few problematic patterns such as the ones outlined above. Remaining supported patterns generally have not been changed. See the Ed-Fi Extension Framework documentation for the list of supported patterns in v3.0.