Student Data & Privacy

Built to collect as little as possible.

The Launchpad was built by a classroom teacher, and it treats student privacy the way a teacher would: collect only what the lesson needs, show it only to the people who need it, and sell it to no one. This page explains, in plain language, what our platform collects and why.

What students provide

To join a class, a student enters a class code and class password from their teacher, their first name and last initial, and a secret word they pick from two fixed lists (a color and an animal, like "Purple Shark"). The secret word keeps two students with the same name from opening each other's work.

That is the whole list. No email, no password of their own, no birthdate, no demographic questions.

What the Launchpad stores as students work

• Which modules a student has started and completed.
• Their answers to activities and quizzes, including short written responses.
• Confidence ratings before and after a module.
• Time spent, including a signal when a student appears stuck on a step, so their teacher can come help.
• Optional written reflections at the end of a module, and optional "ask for help" notes to the teacher.

Written responses are part of the coursework and are stored with the student's work so their teacher can read them, the same way a paper journal would sit in a classroom filing cabinet.

Who can see student work

• The student sees their own work and can export it as a Passport PDF to keep.
• Their teacher sees a dashboard for their own classes: names (first name and last initial), progress, answers, and help requests. Teachers can export their class records and are the ones who manage them.
• Classmates see a student's response only if the student chooses to share it in an in-class activity, where the options are named, anonymous, or private. Private is the default, and the teacher controls what gets shown to the room.
• The Finance Lab sees anonymized, aggregate outcomes with no names attached, which we use to understand whether the program is working and to report results like the ones on this site.

We do not share or sell student information to third parties, and we do not use it for advertising or to build profiles for any purpose outside the coursework itself.

Teacher accounts

Teachers create a real account with an email address and password, a display name (like "Ms. Johnson"), and their school and district. The email is used to sign in and reset a password, nothing else. School and district information helps us understand where the program is being used and supports schools' own record-keeping for California's personal finance requirement.

The services we rely on

The Launchpad runs on two infrastructure providers: Supabase, which hosts our database and handles sign-in sessions, and Vercel, which hosts the application. Both act only as processors of the data described above.

No third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking scripts run inside the Launchpad. This marketing site (thefinancelab.co) uses Vercel Analytics, which counts page visits without cookies and without tracking visitors across sites. Donations happen on donorbox.org and are handled entirely there.

Cookies and browser storage

The Launchpad uses a session cookie to keep a student or teacher signed in, and browser storage for small preferences like audio settings. There are no advertising cookies and no cross-site tracking of any kind.

Retention and deletion

Teachers control their class records. Archiving a class hides it; deleting a class permanently removes its student records, including names, answers, and progress.

After a class is deleted, we retain only anonymized outcome statistics and reflections that students chose to share anonymously. Neither carries a name or any way to identify a student. Families or schools can also request deletion directly by writing to team@thefinancelab.co.

Younger students

The Launchpad is designed for high school students, primarily 11th and 12th grade. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

For schools and districts

The Launchpad's minimal-data design is meant to make a school's job easy under FERPA and California's student privacy laws, including SOPIPA. Student information is used only to provide the program for the school's educational purposes: not for advertising, not for marketing, and not for building profiles.

If your district requires a signed student data privacy agreement, write to us and we will work through it with you.

Changes and contact

If our practices change, we will update this page and its effective date. Questions about anything here? Write to team@thefinancelab.co and a real person (a teacher) will answer.

Effective July 23, 2026 · The Finance Lab · 501(c)(3) Nonprofit · EIN: 82-5305120