Why Ed-Fi Is Fueling the Next Wave of Edtech Innovation
There’s a lot of excitement in education about how edtech innovation can improve teaching and learning. But supporting innovation depends on data interoperability. If every school system stores and exchanges data differently, the delays and higher costs associated with fixing that problem make it difficult to scale new solutions.
Ed-Fi, a data standard created for K-12 education, is changing that. What began primarily as a standardized way for districts to report data has evolved into something much bigger: a common infrastructure that is supporting the creation of a new ecosystem of educational innovation.
The K-12 Data Integration Problem
Before Ed-Fi became the standard, school districts configured their data according to their own needs. “Needing to roll up that data and compare districts side by side was an afterthought,” says Rob Nield, Data Architect at Unicon.
It turned out to be a very expensive and time-consuming afterthought when it came to state reporting, as sending data in various formats made it extremely difficult to compare metrics. Data integrations, extractions, and transformations to ensure consistency all required custom development, an expensive and time-consuming process.
By creating a common data model, Ed-Fi enabled predictable APIs and consistent downstream data, supporting apples-to-apples comparisons. This convinced several state education agencies to adopt the standard as part of their data infrastructure, a significant step in boosting its prevalence. “The moment states started to say it makes a lot of sense for data to be reported in Ed-Fi, districts fell in line,” says Rob.
Standardization Creates an Innovation Platform
Beyond easier reporting for compliance, widespread adoption of Ed-Fi as a standard changed the marketplace. Instead of being required to build custom integrations for every district, vendors can experiment with new edtech applications. They can also be more confident about a market for those solutions. In fact, says Rob, “state education agencies are increasingly requiring vendors to have Ed-Fi integrations as part of their RFPs.”
Instead of stifling innovation, Ed-Fi accelerated the development of an entire ecosystem. He points to companies like Education Analytics, which has built a system to extract data from multiple sources and transform it for analytics, research, and visualization, and EdGraph, which aggregates data and expedites its use for first- and third-party applications.
Adopting Ed-Fi as a standard also enables districts to collect and transmit richer data for deeper insights. Because Ed-Fi is extensible, organizations aren’t limited to the data elements defined by the core standard. They can add data to address emerging needs while maintaining the common foundation that makes interoperability possible. TalentED, an award-winning application for the Texas Education Agency for which Unicon served as the primary developer, provides insights into teacher retention and even bus routes. These extensions become popular enough that TEA often incorporates them directly, allowing other districts to benefit.
AI Lowers the Barrier Even Further
“I built an Ed-Fi viewer that would have taken me months before, and it took me an afternoon.” — Rob Nield, Data Architect, Unicon
AI has the potential to turbo-charge innovation as developers can now build Ed-Fi-connected applications dramatically faster and more cheaply. What previously required months of engineering can sometimes be prototyped in days or even hours.
As experimentation becomes less expensive and more accessible, smaller edtech firms can compete in the market. Lower development costs also make it easier to test ideas that might previously have been too specialized to justify the investment: Districts could build their own niche applications to solve highly specific problems rather than buying software. “We’re at this inflection point where we’re going to see innovation start to open up in ways we never would have guessed,” Rob predicts.
However, data and dashboards alone don’t improve outcomes. Many administrators and districts still lack the data literacy to put insights into action. “I think we have fooled ourselves for probably a decade or more, thinking that once administrators see the data, it'll click,” says Rob. “There needs to be a mechanism on top to help them take the next step.” He envisions AI-powered applications that will be able to suggest actions and even potentially carry them out autonomously—with guardrails, of course.
From Data Standard to Innovation Platform
Ed-Fi’s value has gone beyond reporting efficiencies to driving an ecosystem that supports ongoing discovery, invention, and improvement. As more districts adopt Ed-Fi as a common data standard and AI reduces the cost of software development, we’re entering a new era in which organizations can spend less time connecting systems and more time building solutions that improve teaching, learning, and administrative operations.
As a longtime partner of the Ed-Fi Alliance, Unicon has the in-depth expertise to assist education institutions and edtech vendors alike as they forge this next generation of solutions. Talk to us about how we can help you leverage Ed-Fi to the fullest extent.
