Education Organization Domain - Overview

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 OrganizationDepartment entity represents education organizations under a State Education Agency, Local Education Agency, or School.
• The AccountabilityRating entity holds education organization ratings assigned by an accountability system.

Key Concepts

The key concepts include the following:

• 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 EducationOrganizationIndicator allows for reporting of organization metrics not otherwise defined in the model.

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.