Synopsis

This Request for Comments (RFC) includes materials that describe proposed additions and revisions to the Ed-Fi Data Standard. This draft material is intended to support review and comment as well as support early usage; users of this material are advised that this work is still under development.

RFC 26 would introduce a set of entities from the Teacher Preparation Data Model (TPDM) in the Ed-Fi Data Standard. 

Contents

Overview

Combining data from pre-enrollment (recruitment and application), through enrollment (course work and clinical placement and assessment) out into the classroom (surveys and data sharing with Local Education Agencies) the Teacher Preparation Data Model (TPDM) allows an Educator Preparation Provider (EPP) to understand and answer key questions relating to teacher candidate development (are enough of my candidates completing and getting certified) all the way down to individual candidate/student performance. TPDM helps EPPs strive for and achieve continuous improvement. 

The domains and entities that we are proposing be brought into the Ed-Fi data model are those that:

• Will allow administrators to use data to understand and increase the diversity of teacher candidates
• Will provide key information on the performance of candidates in their clinical placement and allow them to improve program performance

Use Cases

The following use cases describe the most common issues that educator preparation providers are trying to answer with their data.

Program Diversity 

• As a user in a program administration personnel role, I want to view a breakdown of all candidates in my program by different attributes in order to get a snapshot of how diverse the candidate population is. 
• As a user in a program administration personnel role, I want to know if receiving a grant is correlated to higher program completion rates.
• As a user in a program administration personnel role, I want to know the difference between completion rate and certification rate by race, sex, cohort year and program. 

Clinical Experience and Performance

• As a user in a program administration personnel role,  I want to view a summary of candidate ratings for clinical evaluations by objective. I would like to see the percentage for each rating by evaluation. 
• As a user in a program administration personnel role, I want to know to see a detailed view of the distribution of candidates that were evaluated during clinical placement. I want to see each candidate's rating by evaluation objectives and elements.
• As a user in a program administration personnel role, I want to understand candidate perception of the program they are enrolled in through the use of surveys.

Data Model

Candidates

Candidate represents a "candidate for certification or licensure", or a student that:

1. Is attending a university or alternate certification provider, and
2. Is enrolled in a program that will meet the necessary requirements for certification as defined by the state, and 
3. Has not yet received above certification.

A key design decision was to define Candidate as separate from the current Ed-Fi Student. This follows the customary design of Ed-Fi to define and focus on "person-roles" as such entities are generally distinct in source systems. The Person entity is used to draw links between "person-roles" rather than as a super-class, similarly to reflect that the ecosystem does not customarily have such super-classes either, nor unique person-identity systems.

Figure 1. Education Preparation Provider enrollment 

Candidates will take courses related to their certification and then have rounds of clinical placement, shadowing staff at a K-12 school initially and then teaching the classroom themselves. A candidate is assessed a number of times throughout their clinical placement using a number of tools from surveys to rubric based evaluations. Once the candidate has met all the state mandated requirements for their chosen certificate, they are recommended for certification by the EPP. This recommendation allows the candidate to take the exams that will provide them with certification. From the EPP standpoint, the candidate is now program complete. The candidate then has a year to take and pass their exams. Once exams are passed the state will certify them and they are free to apply for teaching positions.

In addition to the different role a candidate plays in the process, data is collected for candidates that are not collected for most K-12 students. examples include:

• If they were a first-generation college student.
• Are they considered economically disadvantaged or displaced, which may open other paths or opportunities while enrolled in the EPP?
• Their enrollment in a program (detailed in the next section).
• Their relationship to staff. Due to clinical placement, candidates can have direct relationships with staff that need to be codified (e.g., mentor or supervising teacher, supervising principal).

Candidates are used in every TPDM higher education implementation.

Figure 2. Candidate and Educator Preparation Program UML Diagram

Educator Preparation Programs

Educator preparation program represents a state approved course of study, completion of which signifies a candidate will have met all requirements necessary to obtain a certification or licensure to teach within K-12 schools. Most educator preparation programs will offer multiple programs each aligned with a certification offered by the state. Some examples from the Texas Education Agency:

• Core Subjects with STR (Grades EC-6)
• Health (Grades EC-12)
• Mathematics/Science (Grades 4-8)

In the core model enrollment is generally handled by an association to a school (StudentSchoolAssociation or StudentEducationOrganizationAssociation), but EPPs track and care about improvement at the program level. With the high likelihood that an EPP will have multiple programs, enrollment at the education organization/school level would make it difficult to track progress or improvement.

Therefore, educator preparation programs are the primary source of "enrollment" within the model for the candidate via CandidateEducatorPreparationProgramAssociation. CandidateEducatorPreparationProgramAssociation provides begin and end dates, a descriptor to indicate the reason for leaving the program, descriptions of the major and minor the candidate has chosen, as well as the pathway for the program (i.e., Traditional, Residency, or Internship).

Performance Evaluations

During the requirements gathering that resulted in the initial TPDM, EPPs identified the need to capture performance data about Candidates and Staff teachers to drive the analysis of effectiveness and improvement. The need spans capturing formal performance evaluations to more informal classroom observations.

The requirement is to support the following types of evaluations:

• By a supervisor, peer or coach, typically using a rubric
• Based upon a quantitative measure(s), like student growth or teacher attendance
• Based upon aggregated responses to a survey, like a student survey or peer survey
• Based upon ratings entered without the details of how it was derived

The original design was in two different domains (PerformanceMeasures and StaffEvaluation) but after only a small number of implementations it was determined that the original design was insufficient. A review was completed on both domains and the result was the Performance Evaluation domain, a flexible and customizable way to track evaluation data for any role. Performance evaluation at its core is a 4-layer hierarchical structure that defines the metadata (how a person will be measured) and the individual ratings. 

Figure 3. Rating and Metadata levels

The definitions for the Metadata levels (and associated Evaluation Rating levels) are as follows:

1. Performance Evaluation. A performance evaluation of an educator, typically regularly scheduled and uniformly applied. Comprised of one or more Evaluations.
2. Evaluation. An evaluation instrument applied to evaluate an educator. The evaluation could be internally developed or could be an industry-recognized instrument such as TTESS, EdTPA, or Marzano.
3. Evaluation Objective. A subcomponent of an Evaluation, a specific educator Objective, or domain of performance that is being evaluated. For example, the objectives for a teacher evaluation might include Planning and Preparation, Classroom Management, Delivery of Instruction, Communication, Professional Responsibilities, and so forth.
4. Evaluation Element. The lowest-level Element or criterion of performance being evaluated by rubric, quantitative measure, or aggregate survey response. For example, the criteria for a Delivery of Instruction objective may include Elements like Organization, Clarity, Questioning, and Engagement.

Performance Evaluations are used in most TPDM higher education implementations, and in the Clinical Experience and Performance Starter Kit. Performance Evaluations are useful outside of higher education, there are at least two K-12 implementations currently in progress that utilize the domain.

Figure 4. Performance Evaluation Model

Credentials

In the core model, Credentials are associated with Staff. In addition, optional associations are supported from the StaffEducationOrganizationEmploymentAssociation and/or the StaffEducationOrganizationAssignmentAssociation to reflect the specific Credential that is used to authorize that employment or assignment position for the Staff.

The credential model as defined in TPDM uses the new person entity to associate credential, so any person-role can be associated with a credential. TPDM also adds the following fields to credential:

• CertificationTitle. The title of the credential received.

• CertificationRoute. The pathway used to obtain this credential (i.e., Standard, alternative, out of state, post-baccalaureate).

• BoardCeritifcationIndicator. Indicates that the credential was granted from a national authority.
• CredentialsStatus. Defines the current status of the credential.
• CredentialStatusDate. The date when the last status was set.

Credentials are used in many TPDM higher education implementations, and the Diversity and Persistence Starter Kit. 

Figure 5. Credential Model (Ed-Fi Data Standard with TPDM additions)

Survey Additions

Survey was originally developed as part of the TPDM but was of interest to the K-12 implementers of Ed-Fi and was brought into the Ed-Fi Data Standard as early access material in v3.2a (March 2020) Survey is still a cornerstone of most EPP implementations. With TPDM leaning into using the person model to connect various person-roles together, we extended survey response and  added an optional person reference. This replaces the previous candidate reference and is meant to complement the existing student, staff and parent references.

In continuing the trend of using the person model whenever possible, TPDM added two new associations:

•  SurveyResponsePersonTargetAssociation. Similar to how SurveyResponseStaffTargetAssociation works in core, this entity allows a survey to be associated to a person as the subject or target of the survey.
• SurveySectionResponsePersonTargetAssociation. Same as above, but for a specific section of a survey, similar to SurveySectionResponseStaffTargetAssociation in core.

These new entities allow for the survey to be about another person regardless of the person-roles that person might have. Surveys where the candidate is the target are very common in higher education, whether it's a principal's survey — a survey that principals take about the candidates in clinical teaching positions at the K-12 institution — or a self-report survey where the candidate is responding to questions about their time in the EPP.

SurveyResponsePersonTargetAssociation is used by the Clinical Experience and Performance Starter Kit. SurveySectionResponsePersonTargetAssociation is not used near as much, but they are analogs to existing core tables, hence their inclusion in this RFC.

Figure 6. Rating and Metadata levels

Helpful Links

Teacher Preparation Data Model RFC Data Dictionary

Feedback

The primary mechanism for feedback is via the Ed-Fi Alliance general project in the Ed-Fi Tracker.