Skip to main content
Ed-Fi.orgDocsCommunityAcademy

Overview

Preparing and supporting effective educators is a shared responsibility among educator preparation programs (EPPs), certification agencies, and the districts and schools that ultimately hire program completers. When these groups work together, the entire teaching profession benefits. To align their efforts with continuous improvement, each stakeholder needs access to stronger, more connected data about the educator pipeline.

To meet this need, the education community conducted research, identified data requirements, and built the first iteration of the Teacher Preparation Data Model (TPDM)—an extension of the Ed‑Fi Data Standard designed to capture key data across the educator pipeline. The model enabled comprehensive, longitudinal information spanning an educator’s journey: from application and enrollment in an EPP, to fieldwork experiences and demonstrated competencies, through certification, placement, and performance.

In 2019, a partnership with the Gates Foundation supported the model’s evolution and renaming, resulting in two versions:

  • Educator Preparation Data Model (EPDM) Core - A streamlined set of foundational entities commonly used across educator‑pipeline implementations.
  • Educator Preparation Data Model (EPDM) Community - A comprehensive, full‑featured extension designed to support broader use cases, including statewide implementations.

Following field implementation, the entities and descriptors from the EPDM Community version were incorporated into Ed‑Fi Data Standard v6, meaning they are now part of the core standard rather than a separate extension. This change promotes consistency and expands applicability across states and programs.

Overview

Navigate to the Ed-Fi Data Standard reference page to access additional Ed-Fi Data Standard v6 Technical Resources, which include information about EPDM related entities.

Navigate to the Technical reference page to access additional EPDM Technical Resources.

Navigate to Educator Pipeline Use Cases for additional context on EPDM backed tools and solutions.