Overview
This document provides a proposal for changes to the v2.0 Ed-Fi Data Standard Education Organization
Calendar Interchange. The proposal addresses a loss of functionality between the v1.2 Ed-Fi Data
Standard and v2.x Ed-Fi Data Standard releases with significant impact to districts, state agencies and
vendors tasked with implementing a robust Ed-Fi API interface.
This document will identify changes between the v1.2 Ed-Fi and v2.0 Ed-Fi data models which have
resulted in an inability for districts to accurately represent school calendars, and impeded the vendor’s
ability to submit all calendar data stored in the SIS system. Additionally, this limitation has an impact on
the ability of state agencies to calculate attendance related metrics and aggregations for district
accountability reporting.
Calendar Limitation with v2.0 Ed-Fi Data Standard
Most schools have multiple calendars defined for specific grade levels, grade level groupings and in
special cases a unique calendar for individual students. A couple of real world use cases are provided
from Nebraska school districts to illustrate the district calendar requirements. Although the use cases
were derived from Nebraska school districts, we believe these use cases are generally applicable to most
public school districts across the US.
Use Case #1 – Elementary School
At elementary schools, kindergarten students will often have different durations than older grade levels.
Kindergarten will have a half day of instruction while the remaining grades (1-6) will have a full day of
instruction.
Use Case #2 – Combined Secondary Schools
In several districts, a separate calendar is created for each grade level (e.g. grade level 1 -6). Sometimes
a calendar is created for a group of grade levels (i.e. 7-8) which share the same session/term schedule.
In smaller districts, a single school may provide education for both middle school and high school
students. Often the middle school students have shorter terms (e.g. hexters, mini terms, and quarters)
to allow the student to take “exploratory” classes. With the variation in terms and grade levels, students
can have different instructional event durations on the same calendar day at the same school
Use Case #3 – Unique student schedules
Smaller schools will sometimes have a calendar for a specific student that is part of a SPED program or
define a unique calendar for a student that has been temporarily assigned to an interim school.
The v2.0 Ed-Fi data model allows multiple sessions to be defined which allows a school to represent
different sessions/terms for more than grade level at the same school. However, it is not possible to
accurately represent differences in an event duration for a single calendar day across multiple calendars.
This creates a limitation which prevents a district (and SIS vendors) from accurately submitting school
calendars to Ed-Fi. The limitations prevent accurate calendar submissions are:

No ability to discretely identify when multiple calendars exist and associate a specific set of
sessions to the calendar (e.g. kindergarten calendar vs first grade calendar).

No ability to directly associate a specific date and event to an individual calendar.
Historical Reference - v1.2 Ed-Fi model
With the v1.2 Ed-Fi data model, event duration was not specified for individual calendar events. The
Session and Grading Period domains provided a reference to specific calendar date/calendar events. The
duration of a specific calendar event could be derived from a combination of session, grading period and
section information. As the calendar event did not specify a duration, it could be used generically for
any combination of sessions and grading periods even when those sessions/grading periods had
different event durations.
1.2 Ed-Fi Interchange EducationOrganizationCalendar – CalendarDate Domain
No duration specified
for events in the 1.2
Ed-Fi model
r events in the 1.2 Ed-Fi
model
1.2 Ed-Fi Interchange EducationOrganizationCalendar – Session Domain
1.2 Ed-Fi Interchange EducationOrganizationCalendar – Grading Period Domain
Proposed changes for v2.0 Ed-Fi Data Model
We recommend the following changes to provide a more robust data model to support multiple school
calendars by grade level or program. Additionally, the changes allow for a discrete rather than implied
specification of calendars. This approach better aligns the Ed-FI data model with the representation of
calendars in Student Information Systems and conceptual representation by end-users. The model
allows for a tight coupling between specific events and individual calendars. This facilitates the
association of students to a specific calendar and associated events for the purpose of calculating
attendance information for state reporting.
We evaluated three approaches to solve the stated limitation with the EducationOrganizationCalendar
interchange:
Approach #1 –Calendar Events associated with the Session domain (Recommended)
Calendar Entity Domain (new)
In historical and current implementations, a calendar is derived by the session, grading period, and
calendar dates combined. This has not been sufficient to identify individual calendars as sessions and
grading periods may be shared across individual calendars. For example, kindergarten and 1-6 grades all
share a year-long session, however, kindergarten may have a ½ day of instruction the same day the
other students have a full instructional day.
We recommend creating a new domain Calendar which can be used to uniquely identify one or more
calendars for a single school.
Calendar
The following elements are recommended for the Calendar Domain:
CalendarDescription (optional) – A textual description of the calendar which is intended for
human consumption. This could be used in validation reports to associate a calendar name to
the calendar records. Additionally, the use of a calendar description could be used to facilitate
debugging of data submission problems by district and support staff.
SessionReference – (1 to many) to identify the sessions which are applicable to the calendar.
CalendarType (optional)– A set of descriptors which describe the type of calendar (i.e. grade
level, program, individual). This information could be used to facilitate state accountability
reporting.
Session Domain Changes
With the addition of a Calendar domain, the Session domain will also include a reference to each
calendar which uses the session. Additionally, the Session domain would reference each CalendarEvent
which is used.
CalendarReference – (1 to many) Identify the specific calendars which use this session.
EventReference – (1 to many) Identify the events which are associated with this session. The association
to individual calendars is inferred.
Approach #2 – Calendar Events are associated with Calendar domain
In discussions with SIS vendors, some have stated that associating the Calendar Dates/Calendar Events
with individual calendars would be an acceptable approach to solving the existing limitations. This is an
alternative approach but has an increased risk of data integrity problems. For example, a session tied to
multiple calendars could result in conflicting events across multiple calendar entities. This approach is
not recommended for this reason.
Approach #3 – Calendar Events associated with Grading Period domain
In Ed-Fi 1.2 data model, CalendarEvents were associated with the Grading Periods. We evaluated reintroducing this association in the 2.0 Ed-Fi data model. In discussions with SIS vendors, they stated that
this approach does not align with their implementations and representation of calendar/event data. This
approach they felt would require a significant amount of effort to support. Additionally, it does not align
well with the conceptual representation of calendars and grading periods by end-users (e.g. district data
stewards, state staff, and support staff).
This approach would also require the unnecessary duplication of event information for multiple grading
periods associated with a single session and force the creation of distinct grading periods for every
session. Therefore, we believe this approach should not be adopted.
Ed-Fi V2.0 StudentEnrollment Interchange Proposed changes
Each student needs to be associated with at least one calendar at a school in which they are enrolled. To
facilitate the creation of accountability aggregations at the school, district and state levels, we
recommend adding a reference to the Calendar (1 to many) in the StudentSchoolAssociation domain.