eScholar delivers platform for scaling the Ed-Fi Solution® across Texas
eScholar’s data management solutions form solid foundation for Texas’ statewide deployment of student-centric dashboards
White Plains, NY, December 2, 2013 – eScholar®, the leader in education data management solutions, is pleased to announce that the company’s highly scalable solutions are being rolled out statewide across Texas as the common foundation of standardized data to support the expansion of the Ed-Fi® solution. The Ed-Fi solution, which includes a unifying data model, data exchange framework, application framework, and sample dashboard source code, is designed to facilitate secure data exchange among the disparate K-12 education data systems in use at the school, district, and state education agency levels. The Texas Student Data System (TSDS), developed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), takes advantage of the proven data quality management of eScholar to ensure that complete and updated student data are provided to each teacher so they have all the information they need to help students succeed.
Texas’ studentGPS® dashboards – powered by TSDS - give educators access to student-level information data that can help them meet each student’s unique educational needs and will be available consistently across more than 1,200 school districts via the eScholar Complete Data Warehouse® -- the most comprehensive, integrated, and scalable data repository available. eScholar technology gives the TSDS system the ability to easily upload and integrate data from hundreds of disparate source systems across multiple school districts throughout the state. Included in TSDS is eScholar Uniq-ID® for Students, which gives districts the power to make sure data for each student is properly and securely identified – which means that students can still get the appropriate, personalized help they need, even if they move across the state.
Secure foundation
The eScholar product suite offers a secure foundation of data integration for Texas’ studentGPS® dashboards, providing access to valuable operational and student-level information from which administrators and teachers can make decisions. While TEA saw the value of dashboards and putting data in the hands of more educators, the agency also understood the need for more scalable data collection and a quality control system before expanding implementation on a larger scale.
TEA turned to eScholar for help – a company with a track record of successful partnerships with other state education agencies. This partnership resulted in a streamlined effort to help TEA meet strategic goals, and continue to collect the statutory data required by state and federal law – while also minimizing the data submission burden on school districts.
“The TSDS-powered studentGPS® dashboards were implemented in seven districts through the initial TSDS Limited Production Release and generated excitement across the state. Educators were excited to see data from multiple systems displayed in the easy-to-navigate studentGPS® dashboards,” said Elaine Rulla, Texas Customer Education Manager at eScholar. “With a successful limited production release, the state of Texas is now ready to expand the TSDS system to educators statewide. The challenge is to implement an integrated, reliable, large-scale data collection system that will be the foundation for Texas to effectively use data to help students for years to come.”
Track record of success
TEA chose the eScholar technology for its ability to meet statewide data management needs, as well as for its proven dependability through years of large scale, sophisticated deployments.
“We are very pleased to see expanding industry support for eScholar data management solutions as a common foundation of secure and accurate data that can be used to help students in a wide variety of ways. It’s exciting to work with TEA and the Ed-Fi Alliance, especially since both are leaders in placing data into the hands of educators,” said Shawn Bay, Founder and CEO of eScholar. “As the team entrusted to manage educational data for more than 40 percent of the nation’s students in pre-school through higher education, eScholar is focused on managing data responsibly to help students succeed. Over the years, we have found that there are many effective ways for education agencies to use data to support teachers, parents, and students. The Ed-Fi-enabled studentGPS® dashboards represent an important piece of that puzzle. Our role is to be the trusted foundation of data collection, integration, quality management – and deliver that to the Texas Education Agency to support educators and help students achieve their goals.”
eScholar has proven to integrate smoothly with existing vendor and in-house IT systems in both school district-level implementations and statewide roll outs while providing a unified, stable, and scalable platform that supports a variety of open interfaces for easy integration of vendor and open source solutions.
About eScholar
eScholar is the nation’s leading innovator in education data management solutions to support personalized education as well as state and federally-mandated data requirements. eScholar's award-winning products provide a comprehensive and scalable foundation of high-quality data that streamlines reporting, data management, and data analysis, transforming the way educators use data to help Pre-K through postsecondary students achieve success. eScholar delivers data warehouse, student and staff identifier management, and collaborative goal planning solutions that enable 13 state education agencies and 5,000 school districts to better serve the needs of over 20 million students across the nation. To learn more, join the conversation on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
About TEA
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is the state agency that oversees pre-kindergarten through high school education for five million students enrolled in more than 8,000 traditional public schools and charter schools. For more information, visit the Texas Education Agency website.
About the Ed Fi Alliance
The Ed-Fi Alliance, LLC, was founded as an organization dedicated to empowering educators with real-time, actionable education data on every student in their classrooms, schools, districts or states. The organization provides and continually updates the Ed-Fi solution, an educational data standard and flexible tool suite designed to integrate and organize raw education data and information from a broad range of existing disparate data sources so it can be integrated, analyzed and put to use every day. The organization actively solicits feedback and input from licensees and education technology leaders. The Ed-Fi Alliance is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. More information about the Ed-Fi Alliance is available at http://ww.Ed-Fi.org.
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Ann Tarasena
Media Relations
eScholar
White Plains, NY
914.989.2955
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