Getting Started

What is Clever?

Clever's APIs automate data integration for developers and simplify the login experience for students and teachers, removing obstacles that hinder the use of technology in the classroom.

For developers, integrating with Clever's APIs means your software can be deployed in nearly any school district, with no additional development or integration work.

Creating Your Development Application

The first step is to sign up for your development application. By default, all applications are set up to access Instant Login only - if you need access to Secure Sync, reach out to [email protected].

Your development application is designed to be used with a sandbox district environments - you will not be able to connect live district data until your application is Clever certified.

Your First Sandbox District

When your development application is first created, we'll automatically connect a sandbox district and populate it with realistic sample data, so you can test your integration. Your sandbox district will be visible in the Districts Overview page of your dashboard.

Your default sandbox district should have:

239 schools
8412 or more teachers
56635 or more students
25843 or more sections
460,000 or more enrollments
6 school admins

This sandbox data represents a "real world" use case; the data is anonymized real district data.

Real world data conditions can be filled with misadventure — the Clever schema notes which data fields may be empty or null. With the exception of Clever IDs, the availability, consistency, and global uniqueness of many fields are not guaranteed and vary district-to-district.

If you have access to our Data API through Secure Sync, you can use the data browser to view the data in your dashboard. If you are only using free Instant Login access, you can download and view the sample data here.

If you need a sandbox district that gives you more control, you can follow our guide for creating custom sandbox districts. This should only be necessary if you want to edit the data in a sandbox district or if you want to understand the district administrator experience on Clever.