Open Source & Non-Commercial Solutions
Data warehousing, interoperability infrastructure, assessment mapping, and architectural guidance to create structured, query-able, secure, accurate, and up-to-date data from a variety of sources.
At Education Analytics (EA), we believe that education agencies deserve the freedom to choose how they build and evolve their data infrastructure. Our commitment to open-source and non-commercial technology is rooted in the desire to remove barriers to entry, accelerate implementation, and empower agencies to own, operate, and grow high-quality analytics systems tailored to their local needs. By offering comprehensive, production-grade solutions like StartingBlocks and Enable Data Union (EDU), we provide not just toolkits, but launchpads — allowing districts to rapidly deploy robust, scalable systems.
We are driven by the principle that every educator and student should have access to high-fidelity, high-availability analytics — without needing to overextend budgets or technical teams. Open-source and non-commercial solutions enable education entities to understand and control their infrastructure spending, avoid unnecessary vendor lock-in, and customize their tools to fit their unique challenges and opportunities.
Open sourcing also brings visibility into how data is transformed and managed, ensuring agencies can trust and verify their data pipelines.
Our Experience Team Specializes in the Following Areas:
Fostering a Community of Co-Builders
For EA, open source is not only about code availability — it’s also about building community. We actively seek to engage with users, practitioners, and developers to iterate, improve, and adapt our tools. This collaborative spirit ensures our tools remain relevant, useful, and adaptable across diverse educational contexts.
Balancing Opportunities with Security
While we embrace openness, we are also thoughtful stewards of public investment. Tools like EDU, developed with public and philanthropic support, are shared under the PolyForm Noncommercial License, allowing free use by non-commercial entities such as school districts, government agencies, and nonprofits. This licensing model encourages wide, equitable access, prevents commercial exploitation that could limit education agency choice, and enables sustainable growth and community contribution.
Rather than fragmenting our tools into partially open “open-core” models, we offer full, ready-to-use systems while maintaining safeguards to ensure the benefits return to the public sector.
Open Source & Non-Commercial Solutions Topics
Data Automation
Our team collaborates as a thought partner to build data systems that automate the sourcing and processing of data to enable timely delivery of analytics. We use the best new open-source technology available to construct data pipelines, with a focus on proactively anticipating data quality issues and making business rule decisions transparent. We also build upon our experiences with other education agencies we have worked with across the country to create common analytics frameworks. This allows us to build faster and more efficiently, while allowing us to tailor our architectural guidance to each partner’s specific needs.
Interoperability
We are proponents and supporters of open-source data standards such as Ed-Fi that enable better, faster, more detailed, and more powerful data analysis. We support education agencies in implementing interoperable data standards and leveraging those standards for data extraction and transfer wherever possible.
StartingBlocks Github Repository | Enable Data Union Website
Equity is a buzzword unless it is accompanied by action. Working with EA as a trusted partner allows SCDE to provide an element of data equity with an Ed-Fi ODS across every district in South Carolina.