Synopsis
This Working Draft presents an exploration of a possible future data standard change reflecting an alternative model for sections. Because this would be a significant breaking change, this Working Draft is to gather early comments and feedback for the approach.
Note: There is currently no plan to incorporate this change into a future release.
- General Discussion
The current Ed-FI model (v4 data model) for organizing instruction is centered about a student’s attempt at a course is via a tightly bound Section-CourseOffering, as shown below:
Current Section Entity Model
New models for organizing instruction in schools have identified shortcomings with the current model, as follows:- Section may be associated with multiple Course Offerings and students (and staff) be associated only with a subset.
- Need to capture responsible teacher for students in a multi-course section.
- Students (and staff) may leave and come back into a course without having to create a new section association or change sections.
- Students may take a course (online, remote facility) without having a Section assigned for it
- Online instruction may occur in combination with a classroom portion.
- Programs are being defined to a myriad of non-instructional or complementary instructional requirements for graduation.
- Section may be associated with multiple Programs and students may not participate in all Programs.
Use Cases
The exploration of a new section model was motivated by the following use cases that were identified over a number of meetings of the State Education Agency Work Group, as follows:
Credit recovery - Multiple students are grouped in a single class with a monitoring teacher. Student is enrolled in credit recovery but not associated with a particular course. Each student may be studying a different academic subject with a different accountable educator who not associated with the section.
Multiple courses taught in the same section – Within a single section, different teachers may be providing instruction for different courses to different subsets of students.
Online course study – Students attempt a course via online instruction that is not associated with a scheduled Section or in combination with a classroom portion. The online course may be taken with a staff teacher, with a teacher outside the state, or have not designated teacher.
Instruction in facilities outside of the school - Students from various schools within a district are grouped together for classes in a facility outside of the school, such as a special education co-op, interlocal facility, or residential treatment facility. The facility is not required to report the structure of their classes.
Student-level participation in program – Not all students participate in a program associated with a section. When a section is offering more than one program, students could be participating in one or more programs in that section. A student may have multiple section associations participating in the same program.
Student exits and comes back to the same section for the same term - This represents a single attempt for which they receive a grade
Career and Technical Education – Practical work experience time is scheduled as the same course multiple times in a student’s schedule.