Is the Education Data Warehouse (EDW) the same thing as our Student Information System ?
No. Student information systems (SIS) or student management systems (SMS) are not data warehouses. These systems are called ‘transactional’ or ‘operational’ systems and are used for transactions related to your school’s day-to-day business. A data warehouse is part of a data repository that holds all of the mission-critical data that your supervisory union/districts wants to use for data-driven decision-making. Although it is not limited to any specific set or type of data, an education warehouse typically contains student demographic data, assessment data, attendance data, discipline data, and course grades as well as teacher-related data. The SU/SD defines the data contained within the warehouse. Student information systems are typically one source of data for a data warehouse. The short paper, “Data Tools”, by Dr. Victoria Bernhardt helps explain the differences between student information systems, instructional management systems and data warehouses.
