Data standards are the shared languages that make interoperability possible. Without agreed-upon standards, every organization must build custom translations between every pair of systems it uses — a combinatorial nightmare that grows worse as the number of systems increases.
Why Standards Matter
Imagine if every country in the world used different electrical outlet shapes, different voltage specifications and different connector types — and you had to carry a different adapter for every destination. That is roughly the situation in technology when data standards are absent. Every vendor defines their own data schemas, uses their own field names and structures data in their own way.
Standards reduce this translation burden. When multiple vendors adopt the same standard for representing, say, a student enrollment record, data can flow between their systems with minimal translation required.
CEDS: Common Education Data Standards
CEDS is a national voluntary effort to develop a common language for education data, coordinated by the U.S. Department of Education. It provides a comprehensive set of data elements with standard definitions, covering everything from student demographics to program participation to learning outcomes.
CEDS does not dictate how data is stored or transmitted — it defines what things mean. This makes it complementary to other standards that address the technical mechanics of data exchange.
Ed-Fi: An Operational Data Standard
Ed-Fi is an open-source data standard and API specification specifically designed for K-12 education. Unlike CEDS, which focuses on definitions, Ed-Fi provides a concrete technical framework for how education data systems should structure and exchange information. It includes a defined API that vendors can implement to allow their systems to communicate with Ed-Fi-compliant platforms.
Many state education agencies and large districts have adopted Ed-Fi as their core data integration framework, requiring vendors to support Ed-Fi API compliance as a condition of procurement.
1EdTech: Standards for Learning Technology
1EdTech (formerly IMS Global Learning Consortium) develops and maintains standards for learning technology, including LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability), QTI (Question and Test Interoperability) and OneRoster. These standards govern how learning tools connect to platforms, how assessment data is structured and how roster information flows between systems.
OneRoster, in particular, has become widely adopted for automating the transfer of student roster data from student information systems to other educational platforms — eliminating a common manual process.
What This Means for Procurement
Understanding which standards your vendors support is a practical procurement question. Asking vendors "which data standards do you support?" and "does your API comply with Ed-Fi or 1EdTech specifications?" separates vendors who have invested in interoperability from those who have not.
See the vendor data questions guide and responsible vendor principles for more structured guidance on what to require.