Background

The preparation and support of educators is a shared responsibility between educator preparation programs (EPPs), certification agencies, and those hiring program completers. When everyone works together, the quality of the teaching profession is strengthened. To do their part and align their goals with a continuous improvement cycle, each of these groups needs access to better data at specific times in the educator pipeline.

In response to this need, UPD (now Crocus) conducted research, gathered requirements and developed technology to create the Teacher Preparation Data Model (TPDM), involving key players as stakeholders in the process and was developed from 2015-2018.  TPDM is an extension to the Ed-Fi data standard for educator preparation that will harness and integrate pre-service and in-service data to be used to prepare educator candidates and support the growth of current teachers. In 2019, the Ed-Fi Alliance received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further invest in the TPDM work. Over the course of the last two years, the Alliance has focused on convening and coordinating the EPP community to mature the model; anchoring the technical work of releases and integrating the model in the Ed-Fi data standard and technology; investing in the Starter Kit strategy; and supported field implementations expanding to California State University, Texas Education Agency, University of Connecticut, the Ed-Fi Starter Kit Pilot Cohort (six EPPs participated), and K-12 uses cases (Holdsworth Center and Great Oaks). 

About the Teacher Preparation Data Model

The TPDM extension enables comprehensive data aggregation over the span of a educator's entire career, from application to and enrollment into an EPP, through knowledge and skills demonstrated in fieldwork experiences, to placement and performance as an in-service educator. Educator preparation programs (EPPs), State education agencies (SEAs), Local education agencies (LEAs), and schools can access and review data through automated data connections to develop strategies to ensure educators are prepared to meet the needs of their students.

The Ed-Fi Alliance in November of 2021 released the TPDM Community and TPDM Core options for the EPP community. Request for Comment (RFC) 26 describes the additions and revisions identified to move a set of entities from the TPDM model into the Ed-Fi Standard- based on Ed-Fi EPP Starter Kit use cases. The  following provides a conceptual overview of the TPDM and the basic technology facts useful for those considering or starting a TPDM implementation project:

Prior to November 2021                                                                                        Current State

Which is best for my organization - TPDM-Core or TPDM-Community?

If you are upgrading from TPDM v1.0 (and not using starter kits), or are unsure, start with TPDM-Community.

Installing TPDM

​Changing the TPDM model installed

If you start with TPDM-Core, and decide later that you need TPDM-Community, you can make the change by installing a new instance of the ODS/API and following the install instructions.​

If you have already loaded data, the choices are:​

• You can re-load data into the ODS/API without changes (since TPDM-Core is a strict subset) ​
• If data can’t be reloaded for some reason, it would be possible to write database scripts to migrate data – but this would incur some additional time/cost​

Future Plans

The Alliance plans to continue to work with the EPP community to identify further entities that are mature enough to move into Ed-Fi Core​

​The following are resources for getting information and engaging in the process:​

• Ed-Fi Community Governance – for convening the community and sharing information​
• Ed-Fi Technology Roadmap - for details on upcoming releases.​
• Ed-Fi Tracker – for submitting tickets.​

Links to resources and documentation:

• TPDM-Core Details
• TPDM-Community Details
• TPDM Technical Resources
• /wiki/spaces/GOV/pages/20321350
• Clinical Experience and Performance Starter Kit
• Program Diversity and Persistence Starter Kit
• TPDM Resources
• Ed-Fi Exchange Resources
  • Educator Preparation Dashboards - A Collaborative EPP Dashboard project led by Crocus to gather requirements, feedback, and best practices from EPPs and partners. 
  • TPDM EPDM Implementation Resources