Models and Schemas

Standard reporting schemas ensure portable information and interoperable systems.

Common Education Data Standards

• The Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) project is a national collaborative effort to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of education data elements to streamline the exchange and comparison of data across institutions and sectors. CEDS provides elements organized into a standard hierarchy and includes a logical data model with multiple artifacts such as entity relationship diagrams. The Domain Entity Schema provides a user-friendly structure for stakeholders from each domain to easily identify elements they are interested in sorted by entity and attribute category. The Normalized Data Schema provides a standard framework for integration of P-20 data systems through a well-normalized "operational data store."

Interoperability Standards

• Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC)
  PESC supports the maintenance and implementation of electronic data interchange (EDI) and the development, maintenance, and implementation of extensible markup language (XML).
• Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)
  SIF, an organization that develops open source XML standards for P-12 data, has developed an Implementation Toolkit containing three documents that are designed to serve as an aid for schools.

Reporting Requirements

• Common Core of Data (CCD)
  The CCD is the Department of Education's primary database on public elementary and secondary education in the United States. CCD is a comprehensive, annual, national statistical database of all public elementary and secondary schools and school districts, which contains data that are designed to be comparable across all states. The objectives of the CCD are twofold: first, to provide an official listing of public elementary and secondary schools and school districts in the nation, which can be used to select samples for other NCES surveys. And second, to provide basic information and descriptive statistics on public elementary and secondary schools and schooling in general.
• The EDFacts Initiative
  EDFacts centralizes performance data supplied by K-12 state education agencies (SEAs) with other data assets, such as financial grant information, within the Department to enable better analysis and use in policy development, planning and management. The purpose of EDFacts is to place the use of robust, timely performance data at the core of decision and policymaking in education; reduce state and district data burden and streamline data practices; improve state data capabilities by providing resources and technical assistance; and provide data for planning, policy, and management at the federal, state, and local levels.
• Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS)
  IPEDS is a system of interrelated surveys conducted annually by the U.S. Department's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). IPEDS gathers information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs. The Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, requires that institutions that participate in federal student aid programs report data on enrollments, program completions, graduation rates, faculty and staff, finances, institutional prices, and student financial aid.

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