ARC Adventures Privacy Policy

Last Updated: July 7, 2019

ARC Adventures, an online educational game, is owned and operated by American Reading Company. This privacy policy describes the ways that American Reading Company collects and uses information about students, family members, and educators.

What is ARC Adventures?

ARC Adventures is an immersive 3D video game designed to help students practice and develop foundational reading skills. ARC Adventures relies on an active subscription to SchoolPace, an online assessment system that is owned and operated by American Reading Company. No additional personally identifiable information (PII) is collected for ARC Adventures. Data collected by ARC Adventures pertains specifically to student progression throughout a series of sight words.

Who uses ARC Adventures, and how do they use it?

  1. Students use ARC Adventures to practice sight words. ARC Adventures uses data from, and supplies data to, SchoolPace, an online assessment system that is owned and operated by American Reading Company. As students practice sight words, that data is recorded and used to provide appropriate sight words to students and progression data to SchoolPace users.
  2. Additional use cases exist within the SchoolPace application:
    1. Teachers use SchoolPace to assess student progress. While conferencing with students, teachers record observations about student learning. Teachers have access to charts, graphs, and other reports that aggregate student progress data for the students in their classrooms.
    2. School administrators use SchoolPace to monitor the progress of students, classrooms, and student groups within their school.
    3. District administrators use SchoolPace to monitor the progress of students, classrooms, student groups, and schools within their district.
    4. American Reading Company’s team of professional developers use SchoolPace to generate reports for the schools they service, in accordance with district contracts and data sharing agreements.
    5. American Reading Company’s technical support team uses SchoolPace to configure rosters, settings, and reports for the districts they service. In addition, the technical support team may access data to troubleshoot customer concerns.
    6. Students use SchoolPace to view their own progress and view coaching tips tailored to their current progress. No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected from students directly.
    7. Family members use SchoolPace to view the progress of their student(s) and view coaching tips tailored to the current progress of their student(s). No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected from family members directly.

How do users access ARC Adventures?

Each student, teacher, school administrator, district administrator, American Reading Company professional developer, and American Reading Company technical support specialist has a unique user account within ARC Adventures. ARC Adventures may be accessed using a variety of mechanisms, listed below. Users are automatically logged out of SchoolPace after a 15-minute period of inactivity. This profile exists exclusively for educational purposes.

  1. Clever Instant Login – A single sign-on (SSO) mechanism that queries the district’s authentication sources to verify user access. When using this mechanism, user passwords are not stored within SchoolPace.
  2. ClassLink One Click Login – A single sign-on (SSO) mechanism that queries the district’s authentication sources to verify user access. When using this mechanism, user passwords are not stored within SchoolPace.
  3. SchoolPace Login – A mechanism that allows users to enter a unique username and password into SchoolPace directly to verify access. When using this mechanism, passwords are stored within SchoolPace and encrypted using BCrypt.

What information may each type of ARC Adventures user access?

  1. Students have access to personal progression through the game's sight word minigames.
  2. Students have access to game data such as their customized in-game avatar, favorite color, and selection of in-game pet.
  3. Additional information is available to SchoolPace users within the SchoolPace application:
    1. Teachers have access to all classrooms to which they’re assigned, and to all students in those classrooms.
    2. School administrators have access to all of the students and classrooms in their school(s).
    3. District administrators have access to all of the students, classrooms, and schools in their district.
    4. American Reading Company’s professional development team has access to all of the data in the school(s) to which they are assigned.
    5. American Reading Company’s technical support team has access to all of the data in the school(s) to which they are assigned.
    6. Students have access to their own data.
    7. Family members have access to data for students in their care.

What information is collected by American Reading Company in ARC Adventures?

American Reading Company collects the minimum amount of personally identifiable information (PII) necessary to roster students and classrooms in SchoolPace accurately. This data, collected within the Schoolpace application, is then used by ARC Adventures to generate unique accounts for students. The following lists show which pieces of data may be collected for each type of SchoolPace user.

  1. Data Collected for Educators and Students
    1. Prefix Optional
    2. First Name
    3. Middle Name Optional
    4. Last Name
    5. Suffix Optional
    6. Username Optional
    7. Password Optional
    8. District Identifier (SIS ID, or Similar)
    9. District Assignment
    10. School Assignments
    11. Classroom Assignments
    12. Login Activity
    13. IP Address
    14. Clever ID (UUID) Optional
    15. ClassLink ID (UUID) Optional
  2. Data Collected for Educators
    1. Email Address
  3. Data Collected for Students
    1. Date of Birth Optional
    2. Gender Optional
    3. Ethnicity Optional
    4. Title I Status Optional
    5. Special Education Status Optional
    6. English Learner Status Optional
    7. Student Performance Data
    8. Educator Observations
    9. Favorite Color
    10. Interactions With eBooks In Integrated e-Reader
    11. Game Data, Including:
      1. Customized Player Avatar
      2. In-Game Pet

From whom is ARC Adventures data collected by American Reading Company?

  1. Students provide their choice in favorite color, customization of in-game avatar, and in-game pet. This data is collected via a series of in-game menus and is transmitted over a secure TLS 1.2 connection.
  2. Students provide progression data through a series of minigames. This data is used by ARC Adventures to provide students with puzzles appropriate to their reading experience. This data is used by teachers to gain a deeper understanding of what sight words are known by their students.
  3. Additional information is collected through SchoolPace:
    1. District Administrators may upload rostering data, including the personally identifiable information (PII) listed above, for the entire district. Rostering data may be uploaded directly to American Reading Company in CSV, Excel, XML, or JSON formats, which are submitted to American Reading Company via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). In addition, districts may provide rostering data through automated mechanisms, including Clever and OneRoster, which are accessed via secure HTTPS requests using TLS v1.2 encryption.
    2. School Administrators may upload rostering data, including the personally identifiable information (PII) listed above, for their school. Rostering data may be uploaded directly to American Reading Company in CSV, Excel, XML, or JSON formats, which are submitted to American Reading Company via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
    3. Teachers may enter rostering data manually for students in their classroom(s) using the secure web-based SchoolPace interface.
    4. No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected from students directly.
    5. No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected from family members directly.

How does American Reading Company secure user data?

  1. ARC Adventures transmits all user data through a connection secured by TLS 1.2.
  2. Students must log into ARC Adventures with their unique username and password at the start of every session in order to access their personal data.
  3. Game data is also stored on the user's device. This varies to the operating system of the device. No personally identifiable information (PII) is stored locally.
    1. On Windows devices, user data is stored in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\LocalLow\American Reading Company\ARC Adventures
    2. On MacOS devices, user data is stored in Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/American Reading Company/ARC Adventures
    3. On iOS devices, user data is stored in /var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/1238821192/Documents
    4. On Android devices, user is stored in /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.americanreading.arcadventures/files
  4. American Reading Company pledges not to sell student data under any circumstances.
  5. ARC Adventures does not display ads, and thus does not allow behavioral targeting of advertisements.
  6. American Reading Company will only contract with future companies that are consistent with Student Privacy Pledge (https://studentprivacypledge.org/) principles or allow users a choice to send information to the future entity.
  7. Additional security steps occur within the SchoolPace application:
    1. SchoolPace is a web-based application, and enforces TLS 1.2 security for all connections.
    2. All personally identifiable information (PII) stored in SchoolPace is encrypted at rest using InnoDB tablespace encryption.
    3. All access to SchoolPace is limited to authorized users with proper login credentials. Login methods, as well as the scope of access privileges, are described above in this document.
    4. SchoolPace is hosted in a secure data center in the United States. Our data center includes biometric door locks coupled with NFC cards. All SchoolPace server cabinets are locked.
    5. District data is destroyed and, optionally, returned to the district no more than 90 days after the termination of a district’s SchoolPace subscription.

How does American Reading Company comply with privacy laws?

  1. American Reading Company does not share ARC Adventures or SchoolPace data with any third parties unless requested by district administration.
  2. FERPA Compliance: American Reading Company's software products meet the requirements of FERPA. Acting as a school official with legitimate educational interests, American Reading Company receives basic directory information from the district in order to populate SchoolPace with student rosters. To facilitate information review by parents, legal guardians, and eligible pupils, SchoolPace includes several printable reports, including the Student History Report and Status of the Class, that may be printed by district staff. If erroneous information is found in student records, parents, legal guardians, and eligible pupils may contact the district to request a modification of the erroneous records. For districts using an automated rostering solution, the incorrect student records will need to be modified in the root SIS system. Changes will be synchronized to American Reading Company's software platform within 24 hours. For districts not using an automated rostering solution, district personnel may make corrections to student records directly in American Reading Company's software platforms.
  3. COPPA Compliance: American Reading Company's software products meet the requirements of COPPA. All of American Reading Company's software products are marketed and sold to schools and districts, not directly to students. No personal data is collected from students, and students are never prompted to enter any personally identifiable information (PII). Any rostering and demographic data used to populate class lists and other constructs is entered by authorized district or school personnel.
  4. CIPA Compliance: American Reading Company's software products meet the requirements of CIPA. ARC Adventures and SchoolPace does not offer students open or unfiltered access to Internet resources.

How does American Reading Company notify the user of changes to this Privacy Policy?

Notification, and request for consent, will appear within ARC Adventures upon any changes to the privacy policy. The user will be provided with the new version of the privacy policy and be required to accept the changes before continuing.

Where is the privacy policy for SchoolPace?

As this privacy policy states, certain analytical data from Bookshelf is aggregated and reported within SchoolPace. To view the privacy policy for SchoolPace, please click here: https://www.schoolpace.com/privacy.html