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, and no questions about race, ethnicity, or gender. Students can pick an income range or immigration status to see college aid guidance that fits them, but those answers are not saved.

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 and whether the Launchpad is the window in front, so their teacher can come help.
• Answers to activities that ask about a student's own situation, like a budget built on their own numbers or whether they have health coverage, so the lesson fits their life.
• 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 download a Finance Notebook, a PDF of their big ideas and their own words, 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. Teachers can also show the room a tally of the class's answers, with no names attached.
• 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 publicly, 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, to reset a password, and for one welcome email when the account is created. 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. We never sell, rent, or share teacher information with third parties either.

The services we rely on

The Launchpad runs on these providers, each acting only as a processor of the data described above: Supabase, which hosts our database and handles sign-in sessions; Vercel, which hosts the application in the United States; GitHub, which stores an encrypted nightly backup of the database for 30 days; and Resend, which delivers account emails, like password resets, to teachers. Students never get email from us.

Inside the Launchpad we use two privacy-focused tools. Umami, an open-source analytics tool, counts page visits and feature usage (like how many classes get created) without cookies and without tracking anyone across sites. It never records names, class codes, or anything a student types. And when something breaks, we use Sentry to collect an automatic error report. Reports describe the error, not the person: names, emails, class codes, and sign-in details are stripped before anything is sent.

Two optional features use the browser's own services. When a student taps the microphone to dictate an answer in Chrome, Google turns the audio into text. When a student taps Listen and the browser offers Google's US English voice, Google processes the text being read. Students can always type and read instead.

There are no advertising or cross-site tracking scripts of any kind. This marketing site (thefinancelab.co) uses Vercel Analytics, which counts page visits without cookies and without tracking visitors across sites. Messages sent through our contact form are delivered to our inbox by Resend, and the site itself keeps no copy. 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. A student's in-progress answers are also kept in the browser on their device until they submit the module. 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; removing a student or deleting a class permanently removes those student records, including names, answers, and progress. Encrypted backups roll off within 30 days.

Afterward, we retain only de-identified results (scores, confidence ratings, and survey answers) and reflections that students chose to share anonymously. Neither carries a name. Families or schools can also request deletion directly by writing to team@thefinancelab.co.

If something goes wrong

If we confirm that student records were accessed or disclosed without authorization, we notify the school or district within 72 hours of confirming it: what happened, which records were involved, and what we are doing about it. We then work with the school to notify affected families, or notify them directly if the school asks. The Launchpad is designed to limit what any incident could involve: it does not ask students for contact information, birthdates, government ID numbers, or passwords they use anywhere else, and students appear only by first name and last initial.

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.

• FERPA. Student records are used only to provide the program to the school. Teachers control and can delete them.
• SOPIPA and AB 1584. No targeted advertising, no profiling, no sale of student data, and student data stays the property of the school and the student.
• COPPA. The Launchpad is built for 11th and 12th grade and is not directed to children under 13.

Your data, on request. We hold student data as a steward for the school, not as its owner. Teachers can download their class results from the dashboard whenever they like, and a school or district can request a copy of its own students' records, in a spreadsheet it can use, or their deletion, at any time by writing to team@thefinancelab.co.

The privacy pack for district review is ready to download: what student data The Launchpad handles and how it is protected, mapped to Ed Code 49073.1 (AB 1584), SOPIPA, and FERPA, with the district data agreement attached. If your district uses the California Student Data Privacy Agreement, send it to us and we will review it and respond.

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 October 26, 2026 · The Finance Lab · 501(c)(3) Nonprofit · EIN: 82-5305120