Ed-Fi
Ed-Fi is an open data standard and reference technology suite, stewarded by the Ed-Fi Alliance, for bringing a district's or a state's education data into one consistent model. It is considerably broader than rostering, and that breadth is the whole point of it.
| Ed-Fi | OneRoster | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Unify education data for analytics, reporting and state accountability | Move roster and gradebook data from a SIS to applications |
| Scope of model | Students, staff, enrolment, attendance, assessment, discipline, finance, programmes, survey | Orgs, users, courses, classes, enrolments, terms, results |
| Steward | Ed-Fi Alliance | 1EdTech (formerly IMS Global) |
| Typical operator | State agency or a large district | The SIS vendor or a rostering intermediary |
| Infrastructure needed | A hosted ODS and API, plus people to run it | An endpoint or a scheduled file |
| Effort to stand up | A project, measured in months | A configuration, measured in days |
| Right tool for a comms platform | Overkill in almost every case | Yes |
The pieces, and what each one is for
People use "Ed-Fi" to mean four different things, which is most of the confusion:
- The Data Standard. The model itself — the entities, their attributes and their relationships, versioned and published. This is the part that is genuinely a standard.
- The ODS (Operational Data Store). A relational database implementing that model. Somebody has to host it: a state agency, a regional service centre, or the district.
- The API. A REST surface over the ODS that source systems write into and downstream systems read from. Vendors certify against specific API versions.
- Descriptors and extensions. Descriptors are the controlled vocabularies — absence reasons, programme types, race and ethnicity codings — which vary by state. Extensions add state-specific fields. Together these are why one state's Ed-Fi implementation is not portable to another's without work.
Newer deployments may also involve the Data Management Service, the Alliance's more recent platform work. The architectural point does not change: Ed-Fi is infrastructure a district or state operates, not a feed a vendor turns on.
When a district actually needs it
Ed-Fi earns its keep when the problem is analytical — joining attendance, assessment, behaviour, programme participation and demographics into one model so that early-warning indicators and state reporting come from a single place instead of eight exports.
Most districts encounter it because their state mandated it. Broadly there are four situations, and which one you are in determines everything about how a vendor integration should be scoped:
| Shape | Who runs the ODS | What a vendor integration looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Statewide, mandated | State agency or regional centre | Certification against the state's API version and descriptor set; state approval to connect |
| Statewide, optional | State, districts opt in | Same technically, but the district can also route around it |
| District-hosted | The district or its integrator | Direct API credentials; the district controls scope and can move fast |
| No Ed-Fi | Nobody | OneRoster or a direct SIS export; Ed-Fi is not the question |
The question to ask an Ed-Fi state. Not "do you support Ed-Fi" but "which API version, which descriptor set, and does connecting need state approval or district credentials?" The answer changes the timeline from weeks to a term.
Why a communications platform rarely wants Ed-Fi
A school-home messaging system needs a small, specific set of facts: who is enrolled where, which adults are attached to them, how to reach those adults, and what language they read. That is a rostering problem, and OneRoster or a plain scheduled export answers it directly.
Pulling the same facts out of an ODS means taking a dependency on state-specific descriptors and an approval process, to obtain a subset of data the SIS could have handed over on its own. It also frequently does not solve the hard part: guardian contact points and language preference are among the thinner areas of most real Ed-Fi deployments, because the analytics use cases that drove adoption did not need them.
Where Ed-Fi genuinely helps a comms programme is upstream of the messaging: it is where a district builds a defensible chronic-absenteeism or early-warning indicator, which then determines who gets contacted. The indicator lives in the data platform; the outreach lives in the comms platform. Keeping that boundary clean is the correct architecture.
Kastr is honest about its position here: we have no Ed-Fi certification and no ODS connector. Our roster ingest is a public REST endpoint plus OneRoster-shaped CSV. If your state mandates Ed-Fi for vendors that hold student records, that is a genuine constraint you should raise with us early rather than late.
Questions people actually ask
Is Ed-Fi a replacement for OneRoster?
No. They solve different problems and many districts run both. OneRoster moves rostering data from a SIS to applications. Ed-Fi unifies a much wider set of education data for analytics and state reporting. A communications platform needs the first; a data warehouse project is more likely to need the second.
Does a district have to host its own Ed-Fi ODS?
Not usually. In statewide deployments the state agency or a regional service centre hosts it. Large districts sometimes host their own for local analytics. Which applies to you determines whether connecting a vendor is a district decision or a state one.
Is Ed-Fi free?
The standard and the reference implementation are openly licensed, so there is no licence fee for the technology. The cost is operational — hosting, integration work and the people who maintain the descriptors and mappings. Districts routinely underestimate that second part.
Do communications vendors need to be Ed-Fi certified?
Only if the state or district requires it as a condition of connecting. Most school-home messaging platforms roster through OneRoster, a rostering intermediary or a direct export instead, because the data they need is a small subset of the Ed-Fi model.
One price. Every feature. Locked for three years.
$3.50 per student per year under 5,000 students. No tiers, no add-on modules, no per-message fees. Published on the site because you should not have to book a call to learn a price.