Teacher Consent for Transcription

Some states, including California, require consent before a listening or recording device is used in a classroom. Your district decides what consent it collects and how. If your district has turned on Teacher consent for transcription, Elevate keeps the microphone off for a teacher until you confirm they've given consent in the way your district requires. Until then, you observe with typed notes.

Recording consent

When you start a new observation and choose a teacher who hasn't given consent yet, a yellow box under the teacher's name says transcription is off for that teacher.

• If the teacher has given consent, click anywhere in the box to check it. The box turns green, and the microphone check appears above Start Observation.
• Elevate saves the consent when you click Start Observation. After that, it won't ask again for that teacher.
• If you leave the box unchecked, the observation runs with typed notes only.

Checking the box is your confirmation that the teacher has given consent in the way your district requires.

Observations with typed notes only

When transcription is off, Elevate never turns on the microphone. A banner on the observation screen says so. Your timestamped notes and quick tags work as usual, and so do the timer, pausing, and ending the observation.

You can still generate a report. Its summary comes from your notes, using the time of each note you took during the lesson. Notes you add after the lesson are labeled "Post-observation".

Withdrawing consent

If a teacher withdraws consent, a principal, assistant principal, evaluator, district leader, or tech admin can update it from the Teachers page. Open the teacher's Actions menu and choose Revoke transcription consent.

The next time someone starts an observation for that teacher, Elevate asks for consent again, and the observation uses typed notes unless the box is checked. An observation that's already in progress keeps transcription until it ends.

Turning the setting on

A tech admin turns this on for the whole district under Settings → Teacher Consent for Transcription. When it's first turned on, no teacher has consent recorded yet. Observations that already started keep the setting they started with. Districts that don't use this setting see no consent box, and transcription works as it always has.

See also: Before you start an observation and District configuration.