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Private Schools - Managing TIDE Portal Access

The TIDE portal is used by private schools to upload rosters for Arkansas statewide assessment testing.

The Private School Permissions screen allows one ADE administrator to easily manage the permissions for private schools that want to have their students take the ATLAS test.

How It Works

Each private school has a bucket that users authorized by the ADE Administrator can upload roster files. Daily, just after the school day ends, the most recently uploaded file for a private school is downloaded from the bucket and converted into OneRoster records. In the middle of the night the testing vendor imports the OneRoster records into the ATLAS system.

As the school uploads new files detailing the changes for a student (enrolled, withdraw, change grade, etc.) the appropriate changes are made to the OneRoster records.

Uploaded CSV files are known for data quality issues. Here are some of the business rules in place to mitigate issues:

• the csv file must contain the exact specified header
• every data field for a student is tested for validity against established business rules
• an audit log of all files uploaded (and their contents) is maintained
• the number of students submitted on an upload can only vary by 10% from the previous upload
• the number of changed students in an upload can only vary by 10% from the previous upload
• once a student has been assigned an Arkansas State-ID the next upload must contain the State-ID for the student or the student will be rejected.

All of the above business rules are validated before the file can be uploaded to the schools bucket. Errors found must be corrected before the file can be uploaded.

Adding a Private School DTC

Authorizing a Private School DTC to upload school rosters can be done by an ADE Employee by:

• visiting the Private School DTC Users screen accessable from their Profile - Permissions page
• clicking Invite a user, and then
• selecting the DTC school and entering the users name and email address
• the system then sends the user two emails: sharing has changed, and reset password
• once the user set their password the user has access to upload roster files

Removing a user from the list removes their privileges. Note that the school bucket will still contains the previous uploaded files and OneRoster records will continue to be generated nightly.

To change the user who can upload for a private school, first remove the current user from the list, and then add the new user.

Every summer during the two week school year rollover every school bucket will be emptied and the audit files deleted.

Data Security

Private School DTCs only have access to upload their own school's roster files. They can also download previous uploads. They do not have access to any other data in the system.

All users in district "Private School District" with LEA "9099000" are strictly permissions limited to only upload and download roster files for their school. If an ADE employee, or any other user, tries to give them permissions to do anything else, the system ignores the requested other permissions.

Note that any user can sign up as a Private School employee, but only users listed on the ADE Managing TIDE Portal Access page have access to the Private School Uploads screen.

ADE Employees with the appropriate permissions are able to assume the identity of the private school user and view the uploaded rosters.