Systems and methods are disclosed for implementing an educational mode on a portable computing device, such as a tablet computer, that is a single-user system, used serially by multiple users. Each user can have a separate user storage that may be encrypted. The computing device boots as a system user to a login screen. A first student user enters user credentials into the login screen. The computing device can reboot the user-space processes, while leaving the kernel running, rebooting the computing device as the first student user. When the first student user logs out, data to be synchronized to, e.g., the cloud, can be synchronized for the first student user while a second student user is logged into the device.