How do I know what user permissions I have?
- You can ask your district level administrator.
- User permissions are normally based on the permission group that you are a member of. See Permission Groups to find out more about permission groups.
What is the difference between a user's permission group and user permissions?
Permission groups
Every user who has been added to Renaissance has been assigned to one of six permission groups: district level administrator, district dashboard owner, district staff, school level administrator, school staff, or teacher.
Every permissions group has user permissions associated with it, which determine what people in that group can and cannot do in the software.
User permissions
User permissions determine whether a person can or cannot perform specific actions in Renaissance.
Permissions have default settings based on permission groups, but these defaults can be changed by a district level administrator (giving user permissions to groups/individuals that normally wouldn't have them, or taking them away from groups/individuals that normally would have them).
What are the differences between the user permissions granted to each permission group?
Very generally:
- Administrators can view and edit (or "manage") information
- Staff members can view information, but aren't always able to edit it
- District-level permission groups give a person access to data from all the schools in a district
- School-level permission groups give a person access to data from their own school
- User permissions for teachers revolve around activity within their own classes (creating reports for their students, creating groups and assigning work to the students, etc.).
For specific information on which permission groups have which user permissions, see the User Permissions Table.
Do user permissions carry over from one school year to the next?
Yes. We recommend that you review user permissions before the start of a new school year.
I can't perform a task that I used to be able to do. What should I do?
Prior to the 2017–18 school year, people could have more than one role. These roles could have different user permissions (called "capabilities" at that time)—people would need to double-check and make sure they were logged in with the correct role to perform tasks.
Beginning with the start of the 2017–18 school year, each person is in a single permission group in Renaissance. If you have tasks that you need to perform but the user permissions for your permission group do not allow it, contact your district level administrator—he or she can change the user permissions that a permission group or individual has.
How do I edit the user permissions for just one teacher?
If you are a district level administrator, you can change one person's user permissions. See the Viewing and Editing User Permissions help topic.
I want teachers to enroll students into classes. How do I do this?
Give the Manage Courses and Classes user permission to the teacher permission group (or give it to individual teachers if you don't want all teachers to have it). This will allow teachers to add or remove students from any of their own classes.
If teachers are given this user permission:
- The teachers will only be able to enroll/unenroll students in their own classes. A teacher could not add a student to (or remove a student from) another teacher's class.
- Students can only be enrolled in a class if they are enrolled in the school where the class is held. Editing a student's school enrollment (a function of the "Manage Students" user permission) is not a default user permission for the teacher permission group (but it can be given to them by a district level administrator).
I want teachers to be able to view historical data for the Star programs. How do I do this?
Give the View Students' Historical Assignments user permission to the teachers.
I want certain personnel (teachers) to be able to view reports for all students in a school. However, I don't want to give them administrator capabilities in Renaissance. How can I do this?
Give the View School Reports and Dashboards user permission to the teacher(s).
I don't want teachers to be able to change the monitor password in the Star programs. What do I do?
You would need to remove the Edit Classroom Preferences user permission from the teacher permission group.
Removing this user permission would also prevent teachers from setting any of the other class preferences, such as the demo video for Star Early Literacy or show missed questions for Accelerated Reader.
I want a teacher to be able to clear locks for students in all classes. What do I do?
Give the teacher the Edit Multiple Student Passwords user permission.
Giving a teacher this user permission would also give the teacher the ability to prompt password changes or reset passwords for all of their own students.
I want a teacher to be able to add teacher-made quizzes in Accelerated Reader. What do I do?
Give the teacher the Manage Content user permission.