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Education Organization - UDM v3.0
- Becky McKnight
The Education Organization domain defines the organizational structure, hierarchy, and other associations of education organizations. The EducationOrganization entity serves as an abstraction for attributes and associations common to all levels of an education organization hierarchy, typically including schools, school districts and other local education agencies (LEAs), regional educational service agencies, and state education agencies.
Key Entities
This domain contains:
- A StateEducationAgency entity, which is an optional entity for the state department of education or equivalent.
- An EducationServiceCenter entity, which is an optional entity for a regional educational service agency between the district and state level.
- A LocalEducationAgency entity, which represents a school district or charter management organization.
- A School entity, which represents a point of education instruction.
- The EducationOrganizationNetwork entity represents a self-organized membership network of peer-level schools or LEAs intended to provide shared services, collective purchasing, or other organizational purpose.
- The AccountabilityRating entity holds education organization ratings assigned by an accountability system.
Key Concepts
- The Education Organization domain is modeled with a fixed hierarchy that must have a StateEductionAgency entity at the top (if present), with LocalEducationAgency and School entities under that.
- The EducationOrganization entity is a complex abstraction with basic information inherited by specific organization extensions such as School or LocalEducationAgency entities.
- In cases where the Ed-Fi data standard is being implemented in LEAs only, State and Local Agencies may be essentially duplicates.
The EducationOrganization Abstract Type
The EducationOrganization entity is one of the few notable abstract base types in the Ed-Fi data model. This provides the ability for the concrete entities such as StateEducationAgency, EducationServiceCenter, LocalEducationAgency, and School to inherit elements common to all education organizations (e.g., institution name, address, operational status). Other entities in the Ed-Fi data model such as Student, Parent, and Staff share common properties – these could all be considered a type of Person – but are not modeled on abstract type.
Why not base Student, Parent, and Staff on an abstract Person type? A key distinction that led to the EducationOrganization abstract type is that the concrete entities cannot be two things at the same time. For example, in the Ed-Fi data model, a School entity cannot also be a StateEducationAgency and LocalEducationAgency at the same time. All entities that inherit from EducationOrganization share characteristics (thus the EducationOrganization base type), but each entity can only be one type of concrete thing. This is not true, for example, of the entities participating in our hypothetical Person abstract type. In the Ed-Fi data model, a person may actually be a parent in one context, a student in another, and a staff member in yet another context.
Model Reference
This section contains reference information for the Education Organization domain model.
Education Organization Model Entities
Name | Description |
---|---|
AccountabilityRating | An accountability rating for a school or district. |
EducationOrganization | This entity represents any public or private institution, organization, or agency that provides instructional or support services to students or staff at any level. |
EducationOrganizationNetwork | This entity is a self-organized membership network of peer-level education organizations intended to provide shared services or collective procurement. |
EducationOrganizationNetworkAssociation | Properties of the association between the EducationOrganization and its network(s). |
EducationServiceCenter | This entity represents a regional, multi-services public agency authorized by state law to develop, manage and provide services, programs, or other support options (e.g., construction, food services, and technology services) to LEAs. |
FeederSchoolAssociation | The association from feeder school to the receiving school. |
LocalEducationAgency | This entity represents an administrative unit at the local level which exists primarily to operate schools or to contract for educational services. It includes school districts, charter schools, charter management organizations, or other local administrative organizations. |
School | This entity represents an educational organization that includes staff and students who participate in classes and educational activity groups. |
StateEducationAgency | This entity represents the agency of the state charged with the primary responsibility for coordinating and supervising public instruction, including the setting of standards for elementary and secondary instructional programs. |
CommunityOrganization | This entity represents an administrative unit at the state level which exists primarily to operate local community providers. |
CommunityProvider | This entity represents an educational organization that includes staff and students who participate in classes and educational activity groups. |
CommunityProviderLicense | The legal document held by the CommunityProvider that authorizes the holder to perform certain functions and or services. |
PostSecondaryInstitution | This entity represents an educational organization that provides programs for individuals who have completed or otherwise left educational programs in secondary school(s). |
Education Organization Model