The Education Data Exchange Network (EDEN) is a set of K-12 statistical reports gathered from state agencies by the US Department of Education. Formerly known as Performance-Based Data Management Initiative (PBDMI), EDEN attempts to gather statistics from each state such as school populations within subgroups (race, gender, etc.), graduation rates and school spending. EDEN data gathering is complicated by the fact that no data sent to federal agencies may contain private data about an individual student that would violate the FERPA guildlines. So a state agency can not just send a list of students and their test scores. A reporting agency can only send a list of subgroups and counts if the counts are above a small number such as five. EDEN data sets consists of three types:
- Statewide data often called State Education Agencies (SEA)
- District or regional data Local Education Agencies (LEA)
- School-specific data
There are XML representations of EDEN files as well as XML Schemas to validate these files. These files are available from the ED.Gov File Specifications site. EDEN does not yet comply with federal information exchange guidelines as outlined in ISO/IEC 11179 specification nor does it follow the Federal XML Developers Guide. In March 2005, the Secretary of Education, Margert Spellings abolished the office administering EDEN, along with other restructuring and consolidations in the department. [1] Perot Systems has taken over operation of EDEN, and combined EDEN with ED's data warehouse to produce EDFacts. The combined system resulted in costs savings, but EDEN still remains under a strict watch from the GAO as a high-risk project.[2]
