SWG 2023-06-01 Meeting

Participation

The meeting was held 2023-06-01  1:00Pm -2:00pm CT via WebEx

Meeting materials

• Section Model Updates v7

Link to Meeting Recording

Agenda and Notes

• Section/Course Transcript Model Changes - presented by Mustafa Yilmaz and Ed Comer
  • Updates to the proposal for section model
    • Intro on development of section model
      • Based on community feedback at the Summit, Mustafa decided to make section model a top priority for data standard v5
      • Use cases indicative of needs to change current section model
      • Goal is to address all concerns from community members and redefine Ed-Fi model based on feedback
      • Details of the document and Data Standard team's work can be tracked by the following ticket: https://tracker.ed-fi.org/browse/DATASTD-1596

• • • Approach
      • Augmented Course Transcript Handbook Model (see PPT)
        • Support from SIS vendors
  • Q&A
    • IN
      • Looking to see if the section is for attendance only or for credit recovery or for credit only? From the state side, we want to know all three.  State doesn’t need to capture the relationship between the attendance only section to the credit only sections.  Similarly they don’t need to know who the responsible teacher is for the attendance only section under a credit recovery section.  They certainly need to capture the responsible teacher for the credit only section(s).
      • IN doesn’t need teacher reference for attendance
      • Section and subsection would cover where we are going
      • What is missing in the model is a direct tie up between the responsible teacher to those credit only sections.
      • Sayee - what if we have a common type (a structure) with section, responsible teacher, and program and have that common type as an optional collection within Course Transcript?
      • Mustafa - most schools said they don’t need to collect attendance for section; is there a need to collect attendance?
      • AZ- Instead of having section and program collection separately under Course Transcript, is it possible to have a StudentSectionAssociation and a StudentProgramAssociation? Audrey’s take - it would make the model very complex because of the number of primary keys in the StudentSectionAssociation.  So referencing StudentSectionAssociation in Course Transcript is not a viable option. 
      • IN - bigger need on our side is a combination of 2 distinctive uses, who is the responsible educator and outcome.
    • WI
      • WI has program collection as an extension to student association
      • Is the proposal to transcript not solving the WI issue?
        • But we do collect transcripts for other downstream application integrations.
      • WI wants to see begin date removed from the section primary key
        • Not supported by vendors
          
          • Some vendors could make the change, but it’s a lot of work. One vendor is not onboard with the change.
          • Vendors have a workaround for the district so they are reluctant to make the change.
        • Can we wait on removing the begin date from the section beyond data standard version 5.0? Many states are not taking v5.0 hence WI is fine with implementing the section without the begin date beyond 5.0. 
    • NE
      • We are not using course transcript for state reporting, so no opinion on the model
      • We have other issues to resolve first
      • Students in same section may be taking different programs
        • We are not using section data for accountability data
        • Any flexibility on section is helpful
    • DE
      
      • We are collecting the data but not doing much with it so far
    • AZ
      
      • With these 3 new columns in the table, we can use staff association section
      • Might be sufficient to have some sections in the model
      • AZ still collects data but not using
      • Rosh - Because you can’t map a staff section association to a particular student in a section. The course transcript references allow for that
    • Sayee - Are we ok with the separate section and program collection as attributes in Course Transcript, or do we need to bring in student section association?
      • WI
        
        • That is going to be a nightmare updating references
        • Reference separate as student as section
      • IN
        • Credit recovery - student is taking 2 classes, doesn’t have a course code to cover both classes
        • We need to know who is the responsible eductor for each of the class, who is not the person taking attendance
        • For us it’s 3 sections - we need to know the attempt for the 2 classes
        • We have a lot of push back from schools on how to do the scheduling the right way
          • SIS vendors ask why can’t the schools do the scheduling correctly?
          • When we offer a solution of give us 1 section that is outside just for attendance, that we would identify the section internally
          • We need to identify which section we expect to see an outcome. If vendor send everything, we can just filter.
          • We are giving schools funding to educate students. It’s their responsibility to show outcome of educating the students.
        • Sayee - We will follow up with IN for more model changes

• SEA Playbook – Guidance for new states
  • Sayee will schedule separate call with new states on prescriptive playbook
• WI - If any state is doing public GitHub repositories, please share with us.
  • MN - Please include me in the information on prescriptive playbook.
  • NE - we haven’t tried doing public
  • MN - we do most of our code not public, we are planning to migrate GitHub to MN enterprise environment,
  • IN doesn’t have GitHub yet
  • Sayee will check with TX IT team
• Data Standard SIG - Mustafa
  • Side Note - Data standard team had conversation after TC about starting a SIG on data standards
  • Would like SEA members to join in addition to MPS and vendors, will start in mid-Fall

Next meeting: 7/6/2023 1:00-2:15PM CT

Last Update: 01 Jun 2023