Key Takeaways:
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Efficiency at Scale: By uniting the Ed-Fi Data Standard and OneRoster® into one solution, districts stand to save time and reduce maintenance.
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Simpler, Smarter Integrations: When edtech providers only need to meet one standard, it has the potential to streamline communication and enable faster rostering, while still ensuring schools have the data they need to support student success.
At the South Carolina Department of Education, we’re always looking for ways to simplify the technology experience for our districts while ensuring that students and teachers have seamless access to the tools they need. That’s why I’m excited about our pilot of a new data and rostering solution developed by the collaboration between 1EdTech Consortium and the Ed-Fi Alliance, because it creates efficiencies in our digital ecosystem.
Think about it. If providers only have to work with one standard, we eliminate duplicate efforts and reduce the burden of maintaining multiple integrations. Every small efficiency adds up. For example, if you can save just one hour on a single integration in each of our 85 districts, that’s more than two weeks of work saved. Scale that further, and there’s the potential for thousands of hours of staff time that can be reallocated to instructional support and IT strategy.
This pilot solution combines the strengths of both the OneRoster® standard from 1EdTech and the Ed-Fi Data Standard into a single, coordinated approach. Using the Ed-Fi Data Standard and the Ed-Fi Operational Data Store (ODS), districts can collect and organize data from multiple edtech tools. By embedding OneRoster APIs directly into the Ed-Fi ODS, districts gain real-time access to standardized rostering data, reducing the need for custom integrations and enabling faster onboarding of edtech tools.
For providers, this means meeting one standard instead of many. Right now, vendors often send out reports in multiple formats and languages, which creates confusion and slows down implementation. With this new approach, OneRoster acts as a standardized output layer that translates data structured according to the Ed-Fi Data Standard into a format that downstream tools already support. The Ed-Fi ODS serves as the data backbone powering OneRoster API integrations.
The solution was created by a joint Rostering Steering Committee with members from both organizations’ communities. It drew on proven examples from members, including ClassLink and the Michigan Data Hub, which had already demonstrated the value of leveraging both standards together. In fact, our districts love the ClassLink adoption because it enables the state to provide valuable resources at scale, like access to digital textbooks through the Learning Object Repository.
This work is still in the pilot stage, with Education Analytics and others testing the solution in several states, but the potential is clear. By aligning the strengths of the Ed-Fi Data Standard and OneRoster, we’re creating a pathway that reduces costs, simplifies operations, and ensures districts can spend less time troubleshooting technology and more time supporting teaching and learning.
This is just the beginning, but I believe it’s an important step toward building smarter, more sustainable technology systems for our schools.
About the Author
Dan Ralyea is currently the Chief Information Officer for the South Carolina Department of Education, where he was previously the Director of the Office of Research & Data Analysis. He was also a teacher and research specialist at Rock Hill School District and the Chief Operating Officer at KW Textiles in Buffalo, New York.
