This documentation serves as an introduction to new features and changes made for the Ed-Fi EPDM-Community extension set (previously TPDM-Community), with links to additional detail. This information is for technical professionals who work with the data model, including business analysts, database administrators, and software developers. If you are looking for updates for EPDM-Core, our slimmed down version of EPDM meant to the Educator Preparation Starter Kits, for more information see Educator Preparation Data Model Domain

Contents

Releases & Updates

(v1.2) (Latest)

EPDM Model Documentation

EPDM UML Diagram. UML Entity-Relationship Diagram for EPDM Entities.
Ed-Fi Data Model with EPDM Data Handbook, a searchable, filterable EPDM enhanced version of the Ed-Fi Data Handbook.

Model Improvements & Enhancements

Path Domain (DATASTD-2173)

Working with members of the community we took the original PlanMilestone design from v1.2-pre.1 and revised it to come up with the Path domain. The Path domain was designed to allow institutions to track status towards a goal, primarily a candidate receiving a teaching certificate or a student graduating. With Paths you can:

Set milestones to be met
Group milestones into phases
Build path templates for an entire cohort of students or candidates
Customize a path to a specific student or candidate
Track status of student milestones or entire phases
Transfer statuses of milestones completed in one plan to another plan

Evaluation Domain Updates (DATASTD-2139)

Added optional field ActualDuration to EvaluationRating
Added optional field Comments to EvaluationRating

Previous to this version, ActualDuration and Comments were found on the PerformanceEvaluationRating entity within the model. This meant that if an overall evaluation (PerformanceEvaluationRating) comprised multiple EvaluationRatings, the ActualDuration and Comments covered all EvaluationRatings and thus acted as rollup values. Adding these fields to EvaluationRating allows for both the granular collection of duration and comments and the ability to role the values into PerformanceEvaluationRatings if desired.

Other Additions

Added a StudentAssessment reference to CertificationExamResult. This adds the ability to have hierarchical exam scores, through the use of assessments.

(v1.2-pre.1)

This is a pre-release version of the Educator Preparation Data Model and is meant for review and testing. This version should not be used in a production deployment

EPDM Model Documentation

EPDM UML Diagram. UML Entity-Relationship Diagram for EPDM Entities.
Ed-Fi Data Model with EPDM Data Handbook, a searchable, filterable EPDM enhanced version of the Ed-Fi Data Handbook.

Model Improvements & Enhancements

PlanMilestone (TPDMX-258)

New entity PlanMilestone entity allows for the tracking of progress toward a plan. A plan can be a certification plan for candidates working toward certification, or students working toward graduation.

(v1.1)

Based on the work of /wiki/spaces/GOV/pages/20334458, Ed-Fi is bringing a subset of EPDM into Ed-Fi Core as a core supported extension. This means that there are now two EPDM extensions:

EPDM-Core - Based on RFC-26, Ed-Fi has released a new extension (EPDM-Core) with the entities and fields required to power the Program Diversity and Persistence Starter Kit and the Clinical Experience and Performance Starter Kit. EPDM-Core will be installed by default with ODS/API v5.3 and will have the full support of Ed-Fi Core
EPDM-Community - EPDM-Community is the new name for the existing EPDM. This is the full model with everything you've come to expect with the EPDM.

With this update we are making all EPDM-Community assets open source, including the model, allowing the community to modify the model if it does not fit their current needs, you can find the EPDM-Community MetaEd model in the Ed-Fi Exchange GitHub

EPDM Model Documentation

EPDM UML Diagram. UML Entity-Relationship Diagram for EPDM Entities.
Ed-Fi Data Model with EPDM Data Handbook, a searchable, filterable EPDM enhanced version of the Ed-Fi Data Handbook.

Model Improvements & Enhancements

Candidate Updates (TPDMX-189, TPDMX-162, TPDMX-215, TPDMX-210, TPDMX-243, TPDMX-194)

Candidate Indicator - In an effort to support the need for Indicators that are longitudinal (span multiple years) we have updated CandidateIndicator in the following ways:

Added BeginDate (required)
Added EndDate (optional)
Deprecated Period

Adding BeginDate as a required field and adding it to the primary key of the entity allows the same indicator to be used in multiple years by just updating the date. With the addition of BeginDate and EndDate to the indicator model, period is not longer needed and has been marked as deprecated.

DegreeSpecialization

Deprecated on Candidate, DegreeSpecialization can be found on CandidateEducatorPreparationProgramAssociation to better support Candidates enrolled in multiple programs.

CohortYear

Deprecated on Candidate CohortYear can be found on CandidateEducatorPreparationProgramAssociation to better support Candidates enrolled in multiple programs.

Aid

The Aid common object (for tracking financial aid) has been deprecated and has been replaced with a top level API resource, /tpdm/financialAids. With aid attached to candidate as it was, the financial aid data had to be loaded with the candidate data. This expects that aid data is stored in the Student Information System (SIS), and while sometimes aid is stored in a SIS, many times it's in it's own system and thus requires a lot of work to be integrated into the SIS data.

EPPProgramDegree

Changed to optional

ProgramComplete

Deprecated (this element can cause confusion when a candidate is enrolled in multiple programs. A candidate will be determined to be program complete when an appropriate ReasonExited descriptor is selected on the CandidateEducatorPreparationProgramAssociation moving forward.

TuitionCost

Replaced the existing currency data types with decimal 19,4. The MetaEd currency datatype translates into a SQL money type and this has caused some technical issues, so we decided to replace currency with decimals. Choosing a length of 19,4 (nineteen total digits, 4 decimal places) mirrors currency and makes for a seamless transition with no updates to this data.

EducatorPreparationProgram Updates (TPDMX-232)

Deprecated EducatorPreparationProgramType - EducatorPreparationPrgram already has a required ProgramType descriptor field, and has left this field unused in previous EPDM implementations.

CandidateEducatorPreparationProgramAssociation Updates (TPDMX-233 & TPDMX-162)

CandidateIndicator

Updated from optional to optional collection, fixing a bug that only allowed one indicator per candidate per EducatorPrepProgram

DegreeSpecialization

Added DegreeSpecialization here (was deprecated in Candidate)
Increased length of Specialization shared string from 75 to 255

MajorSpecialization

Deprecated shared string (replaced with DegreeSpecialization common type)

MinorSpecialization

Deprecated shared string (replaced with DegreeSpecialization common type)

CohortYear

Added cohort year here (deprecated in Candidate)

ApplicationReference

Added optional ApplicationReference to CandidateEducatorPreparationPreparationAssociation to better support candidates enrolled in multiple programs.

Credential extension Updates (TPDMX-209 & TPDMX-248)

The Person reference and CertificationTitle field have been made optional. While making the person reference optional is not ideal as it can lead to orphaned certification records, when required it fundamentally changes the way the credential entity works and caused issues when K-12 implementations wanted to use both EPDM and the credential entity.
Added optional EducatorRole descriptor

Performance Evaluation Domain Updates (TPDMX-224, TPDMX-196, TPDMX-206)

PerformanceEvaluation

Added PerformanceEvaluationDescription, a 255 character optional string to allow for more detailed descriptions for the performance evaluation

Evaluation

Added EvaluationDescription, a 255 character optional string to allow for more detailed descriptions for the evaluation

EvaluationObjective

Added EvaluationObjectiveDescription, a 255 character optional string to allow for more detailed descriptions for the evaluation objective

EvaluationElementRating

Increased length of the Feedback field from 1024 to 2048 characters

EvaluationRating

Updated datatype for EvaluationDate from date to datetime to allow for more than 1 evaluation in a given day.
Added EvaluationRatingStatus an optional descriptor, allowing for status to be set for an evaluation

Goals Updates (TPDMX-248)

Added optional goal reference (ParentGoal) to the goal entity allowing a hierarchical structure opening up the possibility of action steps for goals.

New FinancialAid entity (TPDMX-210)

Through our work with the EPP starter kit cohort and though discussion with previous implementers, we found that having financial aid as part of the candidate and not it's own API resource causes issues. When the financial aid data is not stored in the Student Information System, (much of the time it is not), loading financial aid becomes much more difficult as it requires pre-processing to combine SIS and aid data. In addition, working with an iPaaS provider becomes near impossible as there is no chance to combine the data. This lead us to create a new financial aid entity as a top level API resource, allowing financial aid data to be loaded separate from candidates. You can see the new mode in the Data Handbook

StaffEducationOrganizationEmploymentAssociation Updates (TPDMX-214)

SalaryAmount - Replaced the existing currency data types with decimal 19,4. The MetaEd currency datatype translates into a SQL money type and this has caused some technical issues, so we decided to replace currency with decimals. Choosing a length of 19,4 (nineteen total digits, 4 decimal places) mirrors currency and makes for a seamless transition with no updates to this data.

Non-Model Improvements & Enhancements

XML Sample data for v1.1 been added to the Ed-Fi-EPDM-Community-Artifacts repository. Note that this set of data is not meant to be a true representation of how data is to be mapped within EPDM. Its purpose is to test entities and API endpoints for errors.

(v1.0.0)

EPDM Model Documentation

Ed-Fi Data Model with EPDM Data Handbook, a searchable, filterable EPDM enhanced version of the Ed-Fi Data Handbook.
EPDM UML Diagram. UML Entity-Relationship Diagram for EPDM Entities.
MappingEdu: Teacher Preparation Data Model v1.0.

Model Improvements & Enhancements

In the interest of further core alignment and making the transition from EPDM as an extension to being part of the Ed-Fi core data standard, we have made a number of changes to EPDM. In many cases, the changes to the model are extensive and can be found in the linked tracker tickets. What is shown below are the highlights of the changes for each domain.

Education Organization Updates (TPDMX-175)

University and TeacherPreparationProvider have been removed, PostSecondaryInstitution and School should be used instead. To facilitate the move, PostSecondaryInstitution and School have had the following updates:

PostSecondaryInstitution

Added FederalLocaleCode descriptor.

School

Removed SchoolStatus descriptor.
Added PostSecondaryInstitution reference and AccreditationStatus.

Survey Domain (TPDMX-178)

Survey has been extended to use the Person model:

The SurveyResponse entity has now has a Person reference and the TeacherCandidate and Applicant references have been removed.
SurveyResponseTeacherCandidateTargetAssociation has been renamed to SurveyResponsePersonTargetAssociation and the TeacherCandidate reference has been replaced with a Person reference.
SurveySectionResponseTeacherCandidateTargetAssociation has been renamed to SurveySectionResponsePersonTargetAssociation and the TeacherCandidate reference has been replaced with a Person reference.

TeacherPreparationProviderProgram (TPDMX-181)

To show the inclusivity of the EPDM, at the suggestion of the community we removed Teacher or TeacherPreparation from the model. TeacherPreparationProviderProgram has been renamed to EducatorPreparationProgram. The sub-elements of this entity have also been renamed to be more inclusive of the data that can be used, for example, TeacherPreparationProgramType descriptor is now EducatorPreparationProgramType.

Fieldwork Experience (TPDMX-182)

School reference (signifying the K–12 school where the fieldwork was completed) was previously a required collection. It is now a single reference and optional. If the fieldwork occurred at multiple schools, multiple records should be added.
Added an optional reference to the EducatorPreparationProgram in which the candidate was enrolled.

TeacherCandidate and related (TPDMX-183)

Similar to TeacherPreparationProviderProgram, TeacherCandidate and related entities have been renamed and Teacher has been removed. Highlights of the changes around candidates:

The required Student reference has been removed. The reference to a student should be determined through the Person reference.
TeacherCandidateAcademicRecord and TeacherCandidateCourseTranscript have been removed, use StudentAcademicRecord and CourseTranscript instead.
Candidate characteristics have been added.

Application Pipeline (TPDMX-180)

The recruitment pipeline has been updated to tell a more cohesive story. Applicants and prospects have been renamed and had their Person references removed as they don't meet the definition of a person-role within the Ed-Fi data standard. Direct lines can now be followed from a prospective student/staff through the application process and then to an accepted student or employed staff member.

Applicant has been renamed to ApplicantProfile and the Person reference has been removed.
Prospect has been renamed to RecruitmentEventAttendance and the Person reference has been removed.
RecruitmentEventAttendance now requires a RecruitmentEvent.
A number of fields on Application have been moved to ApplicationProfile, including HighestLevelOfEducation, HighlyQualifiedTeacher, HighlyQualifiedAcademicSubject, and GPA.
EmploymentEvent and EmploymentSeparationEvent have been removed from the model.

Staff Extension Updates (TPDMX-179)

Added StaffEducationOrganizationEmploymentAssociation and moved a number of entities from the Staff extension to be more in line with Ed-Fi modeling practices.

Anonymized Students (TPDMX-138)

Anonymized student data entities have been removed from the data model. This includes AnonymizedStudent, AnonymizedStudentAcademicRecord, AnonymizedStudentCourseTranscript, and AnonymizedStudentAssessment.

GrowthMeasures (TPDMX-187)

GrowthMeasures have been removed. Analysis and discussion with various stakeholders implementing the EPDM solution revealed that growth measures in their current form were not used or useful within the data model.

Non-Model Improvements & Enhancements

XML Sample data for v1.0 been added to the Ed-Fi-EPDM-Extension repository. Note that this set of data is not meant to be a true representation of how data is to be mapped within EPDM. Its purpose is to test entities and API endpoints for errors.

(v0.8)

Model Improvements & Enhancements

Person Model

A Person model, including a new Person entity, has been added for use in TPDM.
Originally, the Ed-Fi Data Standard was developed primarily with the student and staff of a K–12 school in mind. The use cases where a single physical person would have multiple representations within Ed-Fi solutions were rare, even when a parent was added to the system. In addition, the data for these roles were generally coming from different systems. Unifying the roles under a "person" was difficult.
As technology within institutions progressed, it's become more common for institutions to have a designated person ID system that provides unique identifiers for a "person" no matter their various roles.
Meanwhile, the EPDM brings focus on a number of additional roles for a person in Ed-Fi solutions. With these considerations in mind, the Ed-Fi Data Standard v3.2.0-c has introduced the concept of a person to the Ed-Fi core model for use within EPDM.
More info on the Person model can be found here.

New Performance Evaluation Domain

Note: Use of the Performance Evaluation domain require the implementation of the person model. See Person Model for more information.

After internal review and discussions with the community, we decided to combine the concepts found in the Performance Measures and Staff Evaluation domains into a single domain, Performance Evaluation.
Along with performance evaluation we have also added a new Goal entity to replace the existing TalentManagementGoal entity. The new Goal entity provides a richer, more defined concept of a goal.
Performance Evaluation uses references to the Ed-Fi Person model rather than references to the person-roles such as Teacher Candidate, Staff, Applicant, and so forth.
An overview of the new Performance Evaluation domain can be found here.

Updates to Credentials and Certification Domains

Note: Use of Credentials and Certification require the implementation of the person model. See Person Model for more information.

Credentials and Certification as defined within TPDM have been overhauled. The changes include:
- The ability to track the lifecycle of a credential (through StudentAcademicRecord).
- The ability to define a catalog of credentials. In previous versions, credentials were created and associated to a person at the same time, with the effect that there was not support for pre-built credentials. This update adds the CertificationLicense entity, which allows full catalogs of certifications to be created and associated to credentials before being assigned to a person.
- Credentials reference the Ed-Fi Person model rather than using direct references to the person-role entities.
An overview of the updated credentials domain can be found here.

Removal of Survey Domain

With the approval of RFC 25, the Survey domain is part of the Ed-Fi Data Standard. The Survey domain has been removed in this version of EPDM.
Teacher Candidates and Applicants can still "take" a survey (the SurveyResponse entity still has references to TeacherCandidates and Applicants).
Teacher Candidates can still be the target of a survey or a survey section.
Prospects can no longer take a survey.
More info on the differences between the Survey domain in the prior release of EPDM and the one found in the Ed-Fi Data Standard can be found here.

Alignment to Ed-Fi Core

The FieldworkExperience entity has been reworked to use the Student role, rather than the Staff or Teacher Candidate role.
Facts style tables have been removed. For the most frequently used facts tables (EducationOrganizationFacts and EducationOrganizationStudentFacts), we have suggested workarounds detailed here.
The GradebookEntry extension has been removed and the changes it contained were brought into the core Data Standard.
TeacherCandidateFieldworkAbsenceEvent and StaffFieldworkAbsenceEvent have been removed.
ProfessionalDevelopmentEventAttendance (now used in the Certification workflow) has been updated to use person model, and the entities to specific roles (TeacherCandidate, Staff, and Prospect) have been removed.

Recruitment and Staffing

To make it easier for an applicant to either apply at multiple organizations or to the same organization multiple times, a number of fields were moved from Applicant to Application, and the Education Organization requirement on Applicant has been removed. A full list of the changes can be found in TPDMX-108.

Miscellaneous Changes

Person references have been added to Teacher Candidate, Applicant, and Prospect.
LevelOfDegreeAwardedDescriptor had minor updates to misspellings in the code value, description, and short descriptions.
Accreditation Status has been added to the Teacher Preparation Provider education organization as a descriptor. The default values provided are listed in TPDMX-132.
References to Credentials entities on Teacher Candidate, Applicant, and Prospect have been removed. Use the reference to Person instead.
Facts style entities have been removed from EPDM.
- For EducationOrganizationStudentFacts, we recommend using the StudentIndicator entity. Details can be found in the Ed-Fi data handbook.
- For EducationOrganizationFacts we have a replacement that better fits standard Ed-Fi modeling patterns. Details can be found here.
Absence Event entities were unused and thus removed from the model.
GradebookEntry extension functionality has been moved into the Ed-Fi core data model.
CommunityOrganizationExtension, CommunityProviderExtension, EducationOrganizationNetworkExtension, and EducationServiceCenterExtension entities have been removed. All were unused in EPDM.
- The field FederalLocaleCode on these entities will most likely be added to the Ed-Fi data standard in a future release.

Non-Model Improvements & Enhancements

New GitHub Repository

To bring TPDM more in line with core Ed-Fi development practices, and to help with the growing number of artifacts for the model, we have created a new GitHub repository named Ed-Fi-TPDM-Extension. This repository will hold:
- XML Sample Data. Data used to test the bulk loader and provide insight into how domains are mapped to data exchange elements.
- XML Descriptor values. Default values for TPDM descriptors in XML format (for loading into the ODS).
- UML diagram for TPDM entities.

Sample Data Updates

XML Sample data for both v0.7 and v0.8 have been added to the Ed-Fi-TPDM-Extension repository. Note that this set of data is not meant to be a true representation of how data is to be mapped within TPDM. Its purpose is to test entities and API endpoints for errors.
"Real world" sample data has been added. This data is meant to represent how data from an actual Teacher Preparation Provider would be stored in the ODS. It does not have data to represent every use case of the TPDM (the XML sample data comes much closer). But, the real-world data provides a richer set of data for those use cases it does cover. We plan to add data for additional use cases with subsequent releases. The real world sample data can be downloaded here

Descriptor Updates

Previously, all descriptors were contained within two files. XML Descriptor values are now split into separate files per descriptor type to make finding descriptor values easier.
Previously, adopters had to parse through XML to determine the existing descriptor values within TPDM. A spreadsheet has been created that has all descriptor values listed, with the Code, Short Description, Description, and Namespace for each.

(v0.7)

Improvements & Enhancements

Online TPDM Instance

An online version of the Ed-Fi ODS / API + TPDM is available at https://api.ed-fi.org/v0.7.0-tpdm/docs/.
Similar to the Ed-Fi ODS / API sandbox instance, this instance of the ODS / API + TPDM is connected to a populated datastore. This means you can view and download the OpenAPI spec, test out TPDM API calls, view response data, and so forth.
Since the TPDM is an extension of the Ed-Fi ODS / API, you can see the TPDM data in the context of the core ODS / API data model.

Updated Versioning for TPDM

As of this release of TPDM, we are updating the versioning scheme. We intend for the TPDM data model to grow and change independently of the underlying Ed-Fi ODS / API technology version. So, we have decoupled the TPDM version from the ODS / API product version (dropping the 3.x) and will now refer to TPDM by its own version number. Thus, this latest release is v0.7.
You can view the technical version information at https://api.ed-fi.org/v0.7.0-tpdm/api.

Ed-Fi + TPDM Data Handbook

To simplify mapping data to TPDM there is now a Ed-Fi Data Handbook that include TPDM, it can be found here

Updated ODS / API Base Version

The ODS / API + TPDM now supports the Ed-Fi ODS / API version 3.2. More information about the ODS / API v3.2 can be found here. The TPDM model has also been updated to be MetaEd v2.0-compliant.

Simplified TPDM Installation

To simplify installation of the ODS / API + TPDM, we have created source branches with the TPDM extension already added. These branches come with built-in fixes, including:
- Updated the Descriptor namespaces. Previously, namespaces were either "tpdm.exchange.ed-fi.org" or "tpdp.exchange.ed-fi.org". We have standardized to "tpdm.ed-fi.org".
- Added default gender Descriptors. Gender descriptors were empty in previous releases. We have added them into the v0.7 release by default.
- Removed sample extensions. The as-shipped v3.2 release of the Ed-Fi ODS / API comes with two sample extensions (Sample and GrandBend) as well as three sample profile projects (ExtensionsSample, Sample, Test). These have been removed from the TPDM-specific branches.
To view the simplified installation instructions, see the Getting Started documentation.
If you would like to add TPDM to an existing project, you can follow the instructions /wiki/spaces/ODSAPI32/pages/27100242. The TPDM MetaEd files on GitHub complete with default Descriptors from the ODS branch are available on GitHub here.

Survey Domain Enhancements

Several enhancements have been made to the Survey domain. With the release of v0.7, implementers have more options to indicate the object of a survey (i.e., who or what the survey is about). These options include Teacher Candidates, Staff members, and Educational Organizations as the target entity of an entire survey. These entities may also be designated as the object of a survey section (i.e., a group of specific questions).

TPDMX-25 - Add a response time field to SurveyResponse entity
TPDMX-45 - Add a comment to SurveyQuestionResponse entity
TPDMX-54 - Add education organization as an optional target of a survey response
TPDMX-67 - SurveyResponse location field description has typos
TPDMX-78 - Make SurveySection optional for a survey
TPDMX-79 - Add teacher candidate as an optional target of a survey section response
TPDMX-80 - Add staff as an optional target of a survey section response
TPDMX-95 - Add education organization as an optional target of a survey section response
TPDMX-96 - Increase length of TextResponse string from 1024 to 2048 (affects SurveyQuestionMatrixElementResponse, RubricLevelResponse, SurveyQuestionResponse)
TPDMX-97 - Increase length of QuestionText from 255 to 512 (affects SurveyQuestion)
TPDMX-100 - Rename SurveySectionResponseRating to SurveySectionResponse and make SectionRating optional

Talent Management Enhancements

TPDMX-10 - Add RecruitmentEventType descriptor to RecruitmentEvent
TPDMX-34 - Add GradePointAverage common object to Applicant domain
TPDMX-40 - Add Applicant identifier to the primary key for application
TPDMX-68 - Add characteristic common object to applicant
TPDMX-85 - Add Application Period term descriptor to applications

General Updates

TPDMX-21 - Add a comment field to RubricLevelResponse
TPDMX-22 - Add CoteachingStyleObserved descriptor to PerformanceMeasure, remove CoteachingObserved boolean
TPDMX-30 - Add GradeLevelDescriptor to AnonymizedStudent entity
TPDMX-33 - HispanicLatinoEthnicity should be an optional field on TeacherCandidate entity
TPDMX-49 - Change HoursPerWeek on FieldworkExperience entity to HoursCompleted
TPDMX-50 - Updates to CertificationExam common object
TPDMX-52 - Rename StaffTeacherCandidateAssociation to CompleterAsStaffAssociation to alleviate confusion with TeacherCandidateStaffAssociation
TPDMX-57 - Add Standard Error to TeacherCandidateStudentGrowthMeasure entity
TPDMX-102 - Expand StaffStudentGrowthMeasure to allow for multiple score per teacher per year
TPDMX-105 - Increase length of TeacherPreparationProviderProgram name field from 60 characters to 255 characters