The NWEA Data API
This page will cover the basic aspects of integrating with the NWEA Data API. For detailed specifications on request parameters, response payloads, error handling, and to test API calls, visit the API Specifications.
The Data API is a REST API accessible via HTTPS. The resources of our API can, therefore, be accessed from any language or environment that supports making RESTFul HTTPS requests.
Collections and Resources
Currently, the Data API consists of three types of resources: organizations, students, and test results. Each collection has been modeled to reflect real-life relationships and hierarchies, while also respecting standards that are emerging in the education industry.
Organizations
Organizations are generally non-person entities including districts and schools. In your production integration, you will only have access to organizations that have explicitly asked NWEA to provide data to your company or product on their behalf. Information that can be obtained from the Organizations API include: a list of districts you have access to, the list of schools in a district, detailed metadata for a school, and a list of students currently rostered in a school.
Students
Students always have a relationship to a school and district. Student API endpoints may provide detailed demographic and metadata for students you have access to. Additionally, each student is assigned an identifier of studentBid, guaranteed to be unique in our environments. When looking for students based on a partner's roster or Student Information System, be sure to use the studentId or districtStudentId .
Test Results
Test results can be obtained within the context of an individual student via our student-test-results API or in the context of a school with our bulk test result API. Please note that the student-test-results API has been deprecated and will be unavailable after July 2021.
NWEA data sync-up process
To serve our partners better without an interruption during their working hours, long running batch processes will be scheduled to run during the quiet period called "Nightly Processing Window". So that student, test-event, report and other data get the updated data.
Have an issue?
Contact us if you need further assistance.
What's next? Check out the following tutorials for help using our APIs in specific use-cases.
- How to Authenticate
- Understanding Organizational Hierarchies
- Gathering Student Data
- Retrieving students that are currently enrolled at the school
- Retrieving Test Results
If your company does not yet have a System Account, contact support to get things moving.