Membership Orientation Guide
Welcome to the Access 4 Learning Community
We are proud of the commitment your organization has made as an educational stakeholder.
The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, and its special interest group the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants. The Community is “Powered by SIF” as its major technical tool to help manage learning data simply, securely and in a scalable, standard way regardless of platform. The SDPC is designed to address the day-to-day, real-world multi- faceted issues faced when protecting learner information by setting common expectations between market providers and end users. The A4L Community has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to ‘connect and secure effective learning ecosystems’ to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, please explore this website!
About Us
Education is a complex activity that is part science and part art….
With this in mind, education, parents, and school administrators must have access to state-of-the-art tools populated with up-to-date information in order to make effective use of a myriad of diverse resources. These resources, when combined effectively produce an effective learning environment for all students. Seamless integration of a broad a spectrum of instructional, administrative and communication tools is an essential foundation for an environment that addresses the needs of all learners. Students, teachers, and institutions have different needs, requiring these solutions to be customizable and scalable.
OUR MISSION:
To unite education stakeholders in developing open, learner-centered data standards, tools, and best practices that ensure trust, confidence and reliability through seamless connectivity, privacy, and security across learning environments.
OUR VISION:
A world where every learner is empowered by a trusted, open, and interoperable education ecosystem — where privacy is foundational, standards are shared, and seamless connectivity unlocks opportunity for all.
There are numerous organizations providing some great guidance, effect practices and/or tools to address various student data privacy issues. The challenge is that much of this work does not address many of the “on the ground” needs seen by schools, districts states and territories each day. We call these issues “tactical privacy” issues. The Student Data Privacy Consortium’s participants address these day-to-day, real-world multi-faceted issues faced each day in the protection of learner information.
SDPC Goals:
1
Establish a community of stakeholders who have various needs addressed through policy, technology and/or effective practice sharing around effective privacy management.
2
Development of tools and resources to address operational issues not currently being addressed
3
Development of a clearinghouse of student data privacy operational issues and resources to support schools, districts, states and vendors in managing those issues – no matter where the resources originate.
4
Identify projects that have on-the-ground and real-world impact on student data privacy enabling schools, districts, state and vendors find resources, adapt them to their unique context and implement needed protections
5
Leverage partnership organizations working in the privacy space to have their good work utilized and no reinvention of existing work.
Organization Structure
The A4L Community is the membership organization that brings together educational stakeholders to create and improve the SIF Specifications and Certification Program.
The A4L Community governing bodies are listed below. To find out more information about participating members, please click here.
Board of Directors:
Responsibilities: The business affairs of the Corporation are managed by the Board. This group sets the overall direction and strategy setting for the community. Made up of representatives from all three Communities, this group manages the legal, fiscal, and resource management for the Community.
Leadership Groups:
Responsibilities: The Board has general control over all officers, committees and Project Teams with the full power and authority to manage the A4L Community in its locale (i.e. North America (NA), United Kingdom, New Zealand or Australia). It endorses targeted Project Teams focused on local needs.
Committees:
Designation: The Board may, in its discretion, designate from among its members one or more subcommittees of the Board. The A4L Community Executive Director may establish Committees and Task Forces made up of representatives from the membership. The majority of these meetings are held in monthly conference calls.
Project Teams:
Responsibilities: The Project Teams have responsibility for directing and overseeing the work of their particular market vertical. Project Teams are formed as is deemed appropriate by the Board to complete the mission of the Community. The majority of these meetings are held in monthly conference calls.
Background
In response to demand from educators, a series of meetings began in July 1998 between Microsoft Corporation in partnership with 18 other companies on the topic of interoperability between education applications. Their primary conclusion was that the best solution was for interested parties to collectively define standards that all software vendors could adopt. These standards would define common data formats, naming conventions, and rules of interaction between applications. These informal meetings became the SIF Association, which was officially launched in a speech by Bill Gates on 22 February 1999.
The Australia A4L Community leverages what has been developed and learnt to-date, in collaboration with Australian education systems and Australian software vendors. The initial Australian data set, SIF Implementation Specification (Australia) 1.0r1, was released at the end of the Q1 2009 as a release candidate one. This data set was put forward to be improved by on vendors and educational jurisdictions of Australia. These improvements formed the basis for the full release version one, SIF Implementation Specification (Australia) 1.0, which has been used in the AU Pilot Program Phase 2 Projects. With Australian community involvement SIF Implementation Specification (Australia) 1.1 was released in December 2010.
In New Zealand, the inaugural A4L Community has been formed for the Te Rito project. The Te Rito project is intended to save schools and teachers time and improve accuracy and efficiency, by enabling effective, secure sharing of information between schools, and providing a way for important learner information to travel with the learner throughout their education.
In North America, the A4L Community serves as the lead technical support to states, receiving the state longitudinal data systems grants awarded by the U.S. federal government. The A4L Community is also leading the work through the National Center of Educational Statistics in convening a group of expert school, state and vendor individuals to create a comprehensive pK12 data model.
The A4L Community in the United Kingdom recognize that there is increasing demand for schools, colleges, and local authorities to enable secure, reliable sharing of data within, and between, institutions particularly as work-based learning and parental engagement initiatives gain momentum. Frequently the applications available for primary and secondary schools, local authorities and colleges are either closed systems, or systems that allow customer access only through proprietary interfaces that need to be developed or purchased as an addition to existing systems. Schools and local authorities can maximise their investment by ensuring interoperability throughout their institutions and therefore reducing redundant data entry: ´Write once, use many times´.
In 2015, the A4L Community launched a Special Interest Group (SIG) to the marketplace – the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC). The SDPC is a unique collaborative of schools, districts, regional, territories and state agencies, policy makers, trade organizations and marketplace providers addressing real-world, adaptable, and implementable solutions to growing data privacy concerns. The Consortium also leverages work done by numerous partner organizations but focuses on issues being faced by “on-the-ground” practitioners. For further information about this initiative, please go to: https://privacy.A4L.org
The best way to make the most of your membership is to get involved!
Go to the A4L Community Site (https://community.A4L.org) and start getting involved today!
Membership
The A4L Community has two classifications of membership:
Community Members
An association, company, individual or educational institution engaged in one of more of the following: the creation or production of software products or services for use in schools or other educational institutions; the education of children; the oversight of institutions which engage in the education of children; or another association whose members are individuals or institutions which engage in such education as their primary activity.
A4L Community Members are broken down into two sub-categories:
- Voting Participant: full membership benefits, including full voting rights and responsibilities.
- Non-Voting Participant: full membership WITHOUT voting rights. This membership category usually includes Education Agencies either purchasing individual membership or “bulk” memberships purchases by government entities, as well as Consortium 'Participant' organizations and Non-Profit Members.
Community Partners
An association or membership organization agreeing to reciprocal membership. Interested entities must request “Partnership” status by petitioning requests through the A4L Community Board of Directors. This is a non-voting classification and maintains almost all other A4L Community membership benefits and obligations.
In addition, State Alliances utilizing the SDPC Resource Registry may offer ‘membership’ to any/all School District/Division at their discretion, within their Alliance. These School Districts/Divisions are referred to as ‘Participating School Districts’. They are not classified as A4L Community members directly, and therefore do not have access to the A4L Community Site, are unable to participate in any Project Teams and do not hold any voting rights.
Further details on membership can be found on the A4L website.
Getting Started!
As a member of the A4L Community, you will receive community access, implementation resources, development resources, the opportunity to participate in committees and functional groups, and the chance to vote on matters of vital importance to the A4L Community.
Please note: It is important that every member of your organization who wishes to be involved in one or more project teams/groups, has their own user profile.
All known contacts have been provided with a Username. This is your email address.
If you need to add additional users, please complete this form.
Accessing your Member Portal
Once your membership has been processed, and you have a Username and Password, you can use it to access any Member-only area, including the ‘new’ Member Portal’, the A4L Community Site and the SDPC Resource Registry. Premium members will also gain access to the SIF Certification Program for testing, SDPC API and discounts on event registrations.
From any A4L website (A4L.org, data.A4L.org, privacy.A4L.org), click on the ‘Login’ click in the top right-hand corner. This takes you to your Member Portal.
If you have forgot your password, no worries! Click ‘Forgot your password’ or ‘forgot username’ and enter the email address associated with your profile. You will then be emailed a link to reset your password. (HINT: You might want to try your email address as your username.)
If you are accessing this area for the first time, you will need to click the ‘Reset Password’ link.
NOTE: To receive the link via email, you must already have a membership profile and the email address you enter must be the email address in your membership profile. If you have any issues, please contact us.
Just click ‘View My Profile’ to update your information, access any invoices associated with your profile, see emails sent to you from the Community, view any forms that you have taken, and update your contact preferences.
On the right-hand side, you will see ‘Quick Links’ to access the A4L Community Site; skip to the SIF Specifications website; quickly access the SDPC Resource Registry; or submit a support ticket should you have any questions/issues.
‘Key Contacts’ will have access to additional information. They can also update any user profiles associated with your organization, pay invoices (for any user), identify/select additional ‘Key Contacts’ and also update the email address for which all membership renewal invoices will be sent.
To get back to the Member Portal home page from ‘Your Profile’, just click the ‘Member Portal’ link at the top of the page.
For more information, click here.
Accessing the A4L Community Site
From the Member Portal, just click on the ‘A4L Community Site’ button in the Quick Links section. Alternatively, you can navigate directly to here https://community.A4L.org, or by clicking ‘COMMUNITY.A4L.ORG’ at the top of the website (https://A4L.org)
The collaboration area of the Community website provides the members with a place for meeting notes, historical documents, pictures, announcements and discussions. You will find extensive resources that can help you get more involved with the initiative and make the most of your membership.
All known contacts have been provided with a Username. This is your email address.
If you need to add additional users, please complete this form.
From the Community Site home page, you will be able to see any Leadership Group, Committee or Project Team (groups) that you are currently a member of in th My Groups section, plus all the available groups currently active within the Community in the Community Groups).
PLEASE NOTE: Some of these groups are restricted to elected members or specific group types.
If you would like to participate in a group not currently listed in your ‘My Groups’ section, just click on the link below this box to request access.
Once you have been granted access to the group, you will automatically be subscribed to the group listserv. The listserv allows you to send group messages to all group participants with a simple group email address. (Please be patient and allow a short time for the systems to sync and update your group permissions!)
For more information, click here.
You will gain the maximum ROI on your membership investment by getting involved in our various Community groups
Don’t delay – go to the A4L Community Site (https://community.A4L.org) – sign up today!
Resources
A4L Community resources can be found on the following pages:
Data Management Resources
For End User Members
In early 2005 the U.S. Department of Education (USED) recommended SIF Certification in the National Educational Technology Plan – Toward A New Golden Age In American Education.
The Plan’s Action Step 7 is Integrated Data Systems. According to the Plan, “Integrated, interoperable data systems are the key to better allocation of resources, greater management efficiency, and online and technology-based assessments of student performance that empower educators to transform teaching and personalize instruction.” A recommendation under this Action Step is, “Ensure interoperability. For example consider Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) Compliance Certification as a requirement in all RFPs and purchasing decisions”.
To facilitate the implementation of this leadership vision, the SIF Association (now the Access 4 Learning Community) announced the release of a valuable set of tools for education agencies to help them begin and continue working toward data interoperability and automated vertical reporting. These tools empower educational end-users to implement data interoperability solutions via gap analysis development, project planning, RFP access and documented best-practice strategies. We have separated our Resources into various categories, all areas hold key information that will help you get started on your SIF journey.
For Vendor Members
The A4L Community makes the SIF Test Harnesses available to members for SIF application agents, adapters and ZISs (click here). This allows vendors to self-test applications in preparation for compliance certification. They are used to generate compliance data for certification by the SIF Certification Authority.
A4L Community members may also take advantage of new SIF Objects that have been developed and obtained draft status. These SIF Objects are awaiting formal release in the normal version cycles of the SIF Specification. Members have access to this information through the community area before it is public. Therefore, it can inform your development projects and can give you a completive edge.
We are also in the process of providing additional ‘developer’ tools on the website which will accompany the SIF Infrastructure Specification documentation, and provide a ‘hands-on’ experience of xPress APIs.
Privacy Resources
SDPC Resource Registry
The SDPC Resource Registry has been developed to provide a framework for identifying solutions that have on-the-ground and real-world impact on student data privacy enabling schools, districts, state, and vendors find resources, adapt them to their unique context and implement needed protections.
Review the SDPC Resource Registry videos to find out more before you start your search!
National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA)
The National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA) has been community developed and designed to streamline application contracting and set common expectations between schools/districts and marketplace providers.
After a great amount of Community growth and feedback, schools, districts, divisions and states indicated they needed their own state-specific version of the DPA for larger adoption.
Two years later, there was enough commonality between state specific DPAs that a National DPA Project Team explored the viability of developing a draft that could be used by any school/district/division across the US. The NDPA has been developed with extensive review and comments from all stakeholders and is designed to address common student data privacy concerns and streamline the contracting processes for users with limited legal or fiscal resources for “one off” contracts with each of the over 13,000 US school districts.
Following extensive Community input, the National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA) v2 was launched in April 2024.
To access the latest version of the NDPA, please go to: https://privacy.a4l.org/national-dpa/
View the NDPA Usage Guidelines: https://privacy.a4l.org/national-dpa/
National Research Data Privacy Agreement (NRDPA)
The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) released the National Research Data Privacy Agreement (NRDPA) to streamline data sharing agreements and set common expectations between schools/districts and researchers. Modelled after the successful National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA), the NRDPA is a collaboratively built and standardized agreement for schools and research organizations to use for FERPA’s research studies exception.
The NRDPA describes the duties and responsibilities to protect existing Student Data including compliance with all applicable federal, state, and local privacy laws, rules, and regulations. Under the studies exception, the Researcher shall be conducting research for, or on behalf of educational agencies or institutions to:
- Develop, validate, or administer predictive tests;
- Administer student aid programs; or
- Improve instruction.
The NRDPA fulfils the requirements of a “written agreement” under FERPA’s Studies exception.
A companion “Guidance Draft” serves as a resource on draft usage as well as effective practices of using student data for research. The Guidance Draft also links to great resources from end users and marketplace providers for data stewards and researchers across the country.
To find out more and get your needs addressed, please join in the conversations by being part of the Consortium.
To access the latest version of the NRDPA, please go to: https://privacy.a4l.org/national-research-dpa/
SDPC Signatory Badge Program
The 30 State SDPC Alliances, representing over 34 million students in approximately 9,000 districts, are proud to partner with marketplace providers to set common expectations in their attempts to build “connected and secure K12 ecosystems” for learners. The SDPC Vendor Signatory Badge Program is a visible representation for those schools and the vendors who have signed standard Data Privacy Agreements (DPAs) establishing those expectations.
The SDPC Resource Registry currently contains a freely accessible database of signed DPA agreements between schools and vendors (to find out the latest number of Agreements click here!). Other districts in that Alliance can easily piggyback off these agreements to simplify contracting and onboarding of software for learners across the globe. The Resource Registry also contains numerous tools empowering both end users and vendors to help manage their digital ecosystems and products for learners and customers alike.
There are no additional work requirements for vendors outside of their normal contracting processes with customers to receive the SDPC Signatory Badge specific to their signed state Alliance DPA. Current SDPC Vendor Members who have signed standard Alliance agreements can access their badges automatically through the SDPC Resource Registry.
Vendor Members: Download your SDPC Badge(s) today!
Log into the SDPC Resource Registry
Go to Tools > Manage Badges
Your earned Badges will be listed / available for download
Usage Guidelines
- Badges are for vendors with signed standard SDPC Alliance Data Privacy Agreements (non-modified),
- Badges can be used by marketplace providers as long as their signed Agreements are active and valid,
- Badges can be used in marketing and communications for recipients,
- Badges can be used in marketing and communications for recipients,
Certification
The SIF Certification Program is a formal program undertaken by A4L Community to confirm that software programs adhere to the rules and definitions of the SIF Specification. The Program involves a series of formal tests validating that software applications properly implement the SIF Specification. A software program which successfully completes the program will be able to display the “SIF Certified” logo on its package, website and in promotional literature which is an indication that this particular version of the software program has been tested and certified to properly communicate and share information with other SIF-certified software programs.
The detailed requirements for conformance are identified in the SIF-enabled Application Product Standard. Only suppliers of a certified product may use the SIF Certified logo in connection with their product.
SIF Certification is important for both educators and software companies. For end-users it gives them the confidence that the SIF-certified software applications they purchase can be integrated with other SIF-certified programs already deployed in their schools or districts, with significantly less effort than was required to achieve similar integration success in the past. It also allows educators to choose “best of breed” software applications that meet their computing needs, and it allows them to increase, with confidence, the number of programs sharing data.
SIF Certification is available to ‘Premium’ A4L Community members.
Premium Members:
To start the SIF Certification process, please go to https://data.a4l.org/certification/ and ensure you have read/agreed to the SIF Certification Policy, Trademark License Agreement (TMLA) and the Certification Agreement, all of which are available on the certification website.
From time to time, the A4L Community will approve new formal releases for use in the program. The A4L Community may introduce new test suites as replacements for existing suites or as part of a continuing policy of extending test suite coverage. Formal releases are categorized as either a maintenance release or enhancement release, depending on the nature of the changes in the test suites. All new releases of a test suite will undergo a beta testing process. Any faults identified during the beta test will be rectified prior to submitting the new release to the Community’s test suite approval process. All new releases must be approved by the A4L Community for use in the program.
Formal releases are categorized as either a maintenance release or enhancement release, depending on the nature of the changes in the test suites:
- Maintenance Releases: Test suite maintenance releases are created to address Interpretations or Test Suite Deficiencies. Maintenance releases will have a 2-week beta testing period open to all A4L Community members. Upon acceptance by the A4L Community, maintenance releases may be used for formal testing and will replace existing releases after a 3-month overlap period.
- Enhancement Releases: Test suite enhancement releases consist of enhancements to existing test suites (e.g., to include new functionality) or entirely new test suites. Enhancement releases will have a 3-month beta testing period open to all A4L Community members. Upon acceptance by the A4L Community, enhancement releases may be used for formal testing and will replace existing releases after a 6-month overlap period.
Test Harness: Please click here to review the Test Suites currently available.
Login credentials for the SIF Test Harness: You will need your A4L Community Site login to access the SIF Test Harness. Your login credentials are your A4L Community Site login.
SIF Certified Logo Usage: Usage of the SIF Certified® logo is governed by the Trademark License Agreement which is signed by an organization as part of the certification process for the organization’s software application. Any use of the term SIF Certified must adhere to all of the requirements of the Trademark License Agreement. See the SIF Certification Policy for additional information.
Contact Us
We hope this Guide has given you an insight into the work of the Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community and explains how you might get involved with our current activities.
Should you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact our Staff directly, or alternatively please submit your question via our Support Portal. You can also Contact Us via the button at the bottom right-hand side of any of our main websites.