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How Rockingham County Public Schools Leveraged LearnPlatform in Pursuit of TLE Seal
What is the TLE Seal?
The Trusted Learning Environment (TLE) Seal Program, developed by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and a group of U.S. education leaders, is a prestigious achievement for K-12 school systems that have implemented “strong, measurable, and publicly available” student data privacy practices. Even if districts don’t pursue TLE certification from CoSN, the seal requirements are a roadmap of best practices districts can actively work toward.
Seal recipients must show their commitment to high standards with evidence of their student data privacy protections across 25 requirements, categorized across five areas.
Why Does the TLE Seal Exist?
With the increasing number of digital tools used across K-12 classrooms, student data is being shared more than ever. Technology is critical to the modern learning environment, with data helping personalize student experiences. School leaders are tasked with managing the security of student data while implementing processes and standards that meet regulatory requirements. The TLE Seal gives school systems a set of practices that help them continuously examine and improve their student data privacy processes – processes that can be streamlined and standardized with the help of LearnPlatform.
District Spotlight:
Rockingham County School District
Rockingham County Public Schools (RCPS) received the TLE seal in June 2021 after nearly two years of work. The rural Virginia district recognized the protection of student data as critical to the district’s technology infrastructure.
As the district team realized how much student data was being collected and shared as it brought on more and more digital resources, it knew it must investigate what data was being shared and how edtech providers were handling that data.
The “Business Practice” requirement asks recipients to establish edtech vetting processes and contracts for product providers that comply with applicable laws. Perkins and RCPS used LearnPlatform’s edtech efficiency tool to streamline workflows associated with requesting and adoption of tools, while ensuring each tool was compliant.
Perkins said that the platform fit within the district’s instructional model, and eased some of the burden in ensuring teachers were requesting and using compliant edtech tools.
A key component for RCPS was district-wide educator buy-in, which relied on transparent, consistent communication. The data privacy team, which consisted of representatives across the district, communicated regularly with teachers both about the importance of doing this work, as well as their role in the continued protection of student data. District leaders gave teachers a clear and consistent path to discover which tools were vetted and compliant while simultaneously giving them the ability to kick off a rigorous vetting process for required tools that were not yet reviewed.
How LearnPlatform Can Help
LearnPlatform helps districts streamline and customize their edtech product vetting and purchasing processes, addressing any applicable compliance regulations – this applies directly to the “Business Practice” requirement area included in the TLE framework. Districts can also use LearnPlatform to communicate compliance with privacy and security policies to all stakeholders.
Our platform enables school systems to collect the information they need to ensure an edtech product is compliant with federal, state and district student data privacy policies and regulations.
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