2022-11-06 Educator Preparation Work Group Meeting Minutes

Participation:

The meeting was held on 2022-11-06, 1:30pm - 3:00pm CT, at Ed-Fi Summit

Link to Meeting PPT

Agenda

1. Updates
2. Improved Data Use
3. Interoperability and Prioritization process - Technology
4. Lessons Learned

Meeting Notes:

• Gap/challenge
  • A recurring gap/challenge has been getting the data; all these major pipelines of data but what about the ancillary data points that have not been included; want to analyze and be able to make decisions on it. Want a repeatable, automated fashion. Find a simple maintainable way to get all such as evaluation data. 
  • Want to be able to keep it going in a sustainable way – good combination of technical and program expertise/understanding
  • What it looks like when the dashboard has data: Using for decision making such as where do we change our curriculum
  • Want to collect data once and use multiple times
  • Want to use University ID throughout
• Ed prep from K12 perspective and building tool kit for educators inc pd, performance data over multiple years, working now on second piece and will go on to third. Working with pilot school districts in Texas (through MSDF support). Small data set of 60 items with employee ID as unique identifier. 
• Connecticut is also linking data to cohort (Cali – Crocus). Outcome showed a timing mismatch – employment data and program data is 8 – 10 month lag. Data governance focus is looking at process improvement. 
• Everyone needs a TEA ID along with an admission date – enables multiple uses of data.
• Another Texas initiative through US PREP working with TEA to build a data system – being built with support of education deans 
• Interactive dashboards to provide employment, retention, test performance ++ free to every EPP in Texas and leveraging EPDM and Ed-Fi core (120 EPPs in Texas). Will have spring 2023 launch – will be able to drill down to individuals by ID#. And looking at how we can pivot to LEAs. <<<Every LEA is getting their own ODS>>>

• Updates
  • Next release of EPDM with the release of Data Standard 5.0 targeted for August 2023 with primary focus of certification updates; put tickets into tracker if you have other issues to be tackled
  • Are we ready for a breaking change on the model coinciding with identified certification updates? 
  • Ed-Fi plan has breaking changes in 2022 V4 and 2023 V5 and no breaking in 2024
  • Look at certification journey and include projections and changes – to coach candidates in their pathways (micro credentialing certification steps) – Focus on access, success and mobility 
  • Note time to certification, and goal-setting and goal-attainment and points along the way – tracking time and money
•  EPDM 
  • Steven will be collecting and examining use cases and then determine what this does to the model. What would the detailed view be for certification? Certification can be a barrier to graduation – can be the big blocker.
  • See starter kit implementation phase slides – 2022 Starter Kit Implementation Phase and EdTPA Use Case. Issue of attempts’ results are averaged rather than showing result of last time taken 
  • Next starter kit should be focused on feedback between LEA, SEA, EPP
  • Key learnings: 
    • new security issues and changes
    • automation is key to sustainability and Central IT plays a role (partnership with EPPs)
• Data Import 
  • Ed-Fi provides a data import tool to load data for small to medium amounts of data for smaller districts (~50K records per day)
  • TEA tried to use this for large data sets (over a million) and slows to crawl 
  • New data import tool released Friday
    • Examined 11 different tools and are took deeper dive into 4
    • See slide: Data Import Research – Takeaways
    • Talend - Easy to use local tool, but only single threaded for free version, thus not a good contender. 
    • Local tool Nifi – fast; more complicated to set up but better than Talend free version
    • Azure Data Factory and Amazon AWS Glue were fast with AWS first and both had room to grow with more computing power.
    • Full report will be on tech docs next week – of interest to Data Import SIG
•  Building Productive Partnerships with Central IT – How are these relationships best cultivated and maintained and what are the motivating factors for active partnership?
  • Frame the experience as an initiative rather than a project
  • Engage the assessment partners – looking at institution level assessment within regional group (such as data required for accreditation)
  • Operating as ticket shop – not interested in partnership; need documentation and background material – quick and easy documentation to support the ticket request
  • Desire to learn and leverage knowledge to replicate something similar in other areas of the institution—make sure the person IT is talking with knows what he is talking about
  • Private university without processes – consider building relationships and sitting on work groups as the academic translator – be armed with resources to perform that role well
  • Level of IT service has improved over the years – have been fortunate to have strong commitment; build on good relationships and show the usefulness of this work; try to align with university or department strategic plans

Action Items: None

Next  meeting: TBD