Contents

Overview

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Major Changes

Crisis Event and Student

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The Crisis Event model is designed to monitor students who have been displaced due to crises like natural disasters or emergencies. The model collects accurate data on these students post-crisis, which is essential for the distribution of necessary funding, resources, and support to students and educational organizations.

A publication by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (see: Forum Guide To Planning For, Collecting, And Managing Data About Students Displaced By A Crisis) defines crisis and displaced student as following:

Crisis: A natural or man-made event that causes the disruption of school-level activities and the temporary or permanent displacement of students. This definition does not distinguish between natural disasters and other types of crises, such as acts of terrorism, as long as they temporarily or permanently disrupt educational activities. This definition does not include events that involve a single student or situations where a student is experiencing difficulties such as mental, emotional, or psychological distress.

Displaced Student: A student who was enrolled, or eligible for enrollment, but has temporarily or permanently enrolled in another school or district because of a crisis-related disruption in educational services.

Based on the parallels we have observed between these definitions of NCES and use cases among the Ed-Fi community members, we have used them in our model design. Our further observations about crisis event and displaced student student is that when a crisis event impacts students, the education agency, typically the State Education Agency (SEA), determines the requirement to track students who are displaced as a result and displaced students may be

(i) from another state and newly enrolled in a school,

(ii) within the state but enrolling in a new school,

(iii) or personally displaced but remaining in the same school.

Model Details

The CrisisEvent is a new entity created to store data for each identified crisis that results in student displacement. The key for this entity is the CrisisEventName, and it has a required descriptor called CrisisType. Optional attributes of this entity include CrisisDescription, CrisisStartDate, and CrisisEndDate. A record in the CrisisEvent is created once for every recognized crisis. This CrisisEvent is associated with the record of DisplacedStudent.

Displaced Student is designed as a common and embedded in the StudentEducationOrganizationAssociation in the Ed-Fi Unified Data Model (UDM) as an optional collection. The DisplacedStudent common captures essential information about student displacement linked to the CrisisEvent through a key reference. The common also includes the DisplacedStudentStatus descriptor as required field while DisplacedStudentStartDate, DisplacedStudentEndDate, and CrisisHomelessnessIndicator are designed as optional fields. A record in the DisplacedStudent entity is created when a displaced student is enrolled, typically when the StudentEducationOrganizationAssociation is written.

The UML diagram illustrates this model, showing the CrisisEvent entity and the DisplacedStudent common.

Best Practices Relating Crisis Event

SEAs should formulate policies to determine which crisis events need tracking of displaced students. These policies could be activated by various triggers such as a FEMA disaster declaration, a governor’s disaster declaration, tribal declarations, or other criteria. Once a crisis is identified, a record should be created in the CrisisEvent entity, with a unique key of CrisisEventName. It’s critical to establish a naming convention to ensure the uniqueness of this name. If there is no generally accepted name for this crisis event, a suggested convention by Ed-Fi Alliance is “Location+Crisis_Type+Year”.

Quick access to the educational records of students displaced due to crises is vital for ensuring their educational continuity and the fidelity of their educational data. If these students are displaced within the same state, their enrollment records in the statewide Ed-Fi ODS can be used to provide their data to their new schools. This facilitates a smoother transition for the students during such challenging times.

Students displaced from other states present further complications. Initially, these students will have a unique student ID from their original state, which may not be recognized in the new state they’ve moved to. Therefore, a student displaced from another state will need to be assigned a new unique student ID in their new state. The student’s identifier from their original state should be documented in the common StudentEducationOrganizationAssociation.StudentIdentificationCode. Special measures will be required to retrieve the student’s records from their previous school in the other state for inclusion in the Student Information System (SIS) and the Ed-Fi ODS.

It’s essential for SEAs to implement consistent data policies that ensure the continuity and accuracy of the data that relates to displaced students if they transition between schools. With the consistent application of the Crisis Event model, the Ed-Fi ODS can offer a robust platform for accurate tracking. Additionally, policies need to be established to define when a student’s status changes from being temporarily “displaced” to permanently “relocated”. While they are optional, using the DisplacedStudentBeginDate and DisplacedStudentEndDate can significantly improve the accuracy of tracking.

More information and guidance on the usage of the Crisis Event can be found at the Ed-Fi's Best Practices TechDoc page (link will be added). 

Student Health

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Student Transportation

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Minor Changes

Race and Ethnicity Updates

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Removing Unnecessary min Length Requirements

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MetaEd and UML Alignment for UDM Representation

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List of All Changes

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