PowerSchool Data Exchange (DEX) for Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Introduction 

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) aims to support all Texas school districts in collecting and reporting data to fulfill the Texas State Board of Education’s mission of preparing students for lifelong success through rigorous academic instruction, career training, and character development tailored to each student’s abilities. TEA believes a successful Texas high school graduate should possess academic, cognitive, technical, employability, and civic engagement skills necessary for success in postsecondary education, industry certification, or the workforce without requiring remediation. TEA is dedicated to improving education outcomes through initiatives such as enhancing the State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) with a statewide automated data collection solution.

What is PowerSchool Data Exchange (DEX)?

PowerSchool Data Exchange is an electronic data interchange (EDI) plug-in built for PowerSchool SIS. This framework enables PowerSchool SIS to send and receive data to and from external data sources securely near real-time. It supports various data formats and integrates with external data models like:

• Ed-Fi Data Standard provided by the Ed-Fi Alliance

• https://www.in.gov/health/immunization/children-and-hoosiers-immunization-registry-program-chirp/

• School Interoperability Framework (SIF) provided by Access 4 Learning Community

• https://ceds.ed.gov/

Data is securely transferred between PowerSchool and the education agency's systems using secure HTTP with security credentials as specified by the education agency. It uses the OAuth 2.0 Web Authorization Protocol for digital authentication.

DEX supports:

• Downloading data into PowerSchool

• Publishing data from PowerSchool

• Syncing data between PowerSchool and education agencies

External agencies like state education agencies (SEAs) have no way of initiating contact or sending data requests to PowerSchool SIS. All data is published, like state reports, as configured and scheduled from within PowerSchool SIS.

DEX for Texas Education Agency (TEA)

PowerSchool DEX with Ed-Fi implementation enables schools and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to easily exchange PowerSchool data when reading the EdFi Operational Data Stores (ODS) for use in the Texas Education Agency (TEA). It allows schools and LEAs to publish data easily and automatically from PowerSchool up to the state Ed-Fi Portal and to download (import) state and vendor-provided data into PowerSchool from the Operational Data Store (ODS).