PERTS Program Privacy Policy
Version 1.5
2022-05-20
About PERTS
PERTS, a project of the Tides Center, is a nonprofit institute that helps educators apply evidence-based strategies in order to increase student engagement and success. We believe that properly scaling evidence-based strategies can empower schools to reduce inequality and create better experiences for all students and teachers. We are committed to protecting students’ privacy, and we take multiple measures to ensure that all data are stored safely and used only by authorized individuals for appropriate purposes, as described below.
Privacy Policy Overview
Personal Information is any information provided to PERTS that personally identifies students, like their name, email address, student ID, or other information that could be used to figure out a student’s identity (for a more complete definition, see “Personal Information” in the definitions section below). In order to develop and improve useful recommendations for educational organizations, PERTS sometimes collects Personal Information about students. Permission to collect and store Personal Information is provided to PERTS by individuals and by Originating Educational Organizations when they use PERTS Services, as described in the Terms of Use, see perts.net/terms-of-use. (The Terms of Use and this Privacy Policy are collectively described as the “Agreement”.) That permission is conditional on the strict limitations concerning how that information can be used, as described in this policy. Notably, PERTS never sells or rents Personal Information to any third party for any purpose. The most up-to-date version of this policy can always be found at perts.net/privacy.
Covered Services
This Privacy Policy governs the way PERTS collects, uses, and shares Personal Information collected from Originating Educational Organizations. This is the privacy policy for all PERTS services except in the case of specific PERTS programs or services that utilize a different policy, as described when registering for those specific services.
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The Who, What, and Why of this Privacy Policy
Purpose
PERTS collects Personal Information in order to enable an Originating Educational Organization to successfully implement a PERTS program. For example, PERTS may provide an Originating Educational Organization with the student IDs of students who did not complete a program so that make-up sessions can be arranged for them. PERTS will only collect personal information to the extent that it is necessary for the provision of services under this agreement; we never collect extraneous Personal Information.
Ownership and Control of Information
All Personal Information is considered the property of the Originating Educational Organization. PERTS will never sell or rent it or use it in any way not allowed by this policy. PERTS will also comply with requests from the Originating Educational Organization to delete or review Personal Information.
Expiration
PERTS deletes Personal Information within four years of receiving it unless we are granted explicit written permission by an Authorized Organizational Representative to extend that period.
Allowed Access
PERTS only allows individuals to access Personal Information under one of the following circumstances:
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The individual is an Authorized Organizational Representative (defined below) of the Originating Educational Organization.
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We are required to do so by law.
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The individual is a member of the PERTS staff or an organization that provides business services to PERTS and all of the following conditions are met:
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The individual needs to access that information for the purposes of implementing the program in question.
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The individual has been trained in data management and student privacy laws and protections.
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The individual is explicitly forbidden from sharing the Personal Information with other parties.
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Collected Personal Information
Depending on the specific program, PERTS may collect students’ names, student ID numbers, student network IDs, nick names, email addresses, social media account usernames, web browser cookies, or phone numbers. As described in the Purpose section, that personal information will only be collected and used for the purposes of successfully facilitating a student’s use of PERTS Services.
Sharing Personal Information
We do not share Personal Information with anyone except under the circumstances explicitly described under allowed access. Furthermore, lest there be any doubt, we never share Personal Information with marketing companies or other third parties who are not directly involved in the provision of services to the Originating Educational Organization. (That is already covered by the allowed access provisions, but we want to leave absolutely no doubt.)
Information Storage
We store Personal Information strictly on encrypted media that can only be accessed by the individuals who are allowed to access it, as described under “allowed access.” We only use cloud services that are audited by third parties and certified to meet the SSAE-16 standard or higher. To see a full list of the cloud storage providers we use and their security statements, see perts.net/cloud-security. We have strict policies for physical security as well, including requiring that staff use only PERTS-provided, password-protected computers, see perts.net/security.
Information Transfer
All our websites involved in data collection, and all data transfer between them and various cloud services (see Information Storage, above) use industry-standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, also known as HTTPS.
Deletion
Requests to delete the personal information of one or more students should be submitted to PERTS at support@perts.net by an Authorized Organizational Representative of the Originating Educational Organization. All requests will be honored as soon as technically possible.
Anonymous Information
PERTS may share Anonymous Information, e.g., aggregated usage numbers, publicly or with its users or partners, e.g., to promote its services or to increase awareness about the effectiveness of specific evidence-based strategies. Any information shared in this way will not contain any Personal Information, and it will only be shared if it meets the strict definition of Anonymous Information we specify below.
Changes to this Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy in the future. However, we will not reduce the rights of students or Originating Educational Organizations under this Privacy Policy without the explicit consent of an Authorized Organizational Representative. If there are significant changes to this policy, we will email its Authorized Organizational Representative a new version of the policy and a description of the change that was made. At that point, the Authorized Organizational Representative may request that we delete all Personal Information collected from their organization.
3rd Party Tracking
We do not track individuals across third party websites unless if required for the provision of services, as described under Purpose.
Operator Contact
For questions and requests pertaining to data deletion and access, you may contact:
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ATTN:
Chris Macrander
PO Box 641019
San Francisco, CA 94164
707-515-0734
chris@perts.net
Definitions
Originating Educational Organization
An Originating Educational Organization is an educational organization that provides information about students to PERTS under the Agreement.
Direct Identifier
A direct identifier is a piece of information that could, on its own, be used by someone in the public or the school community to uniquely identify a student with reasonable certainty. For example, a student’s name, student ID, or school network ID are all direct identifiers.
Indirect Identifier
An indirect identifier is a piece of information that could — in combination with other information — potentially be used by a reasonable person in the school community to uniquely identify a student. Indirect identifiers include any features about a student that a typical member of the school community might know or be able to observe about a student. As such, they include, but are not limited to, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, birth date, age, classroom, ELL status, and teacher name.
Personal Information
PERTS bases its definition of Personal Information on FERPA, the federal law governing student privacy. We consider something Personal Information if it “includes any information that, alone or in combination, is linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty.” In other words, we consider something Personal Information if it contains direct identifiers, like a student’s email address or school network ID. But we also consider it Personal Information if it contains indirect identifiers that would allow someone in the school community to uniquely identify a student with reasonable certainty. For example, if there is only one male Native American student at a particular school, then the combination of the school’s name and the student’s race and gender would be sufficient to identify the individual student with reasonable certainty. In that student’s case, therefore, information that contained that student’s race, gender, and school would be Personal Information.
Anonymous Information
Anonymous Information is information that contains no Personal Information, as defined above. That is, it does not contain any data that could be used to identify an individual student because any potentially identifying information has been aggregated or removed. PERTS only considers information Anonymous Information if (1) it has no direct identifiers and no indirect identifiers or (2) no direct identifiers and the full combination of indirect identifiers is shared across at least 5 records. For example, if there are 4 White females in a particular classroom, then a dataset for that classroom would not be anonymized if it contained gender and race because there would be only 4 records containing the indirect identifier “White” for race and “female” for gender. In contrast, the dataset would be considered anonymized if there were 5 or more White females.
Authorized Organizational Representative
An Authorized Organizational Representative is a person authorized to act on behalf of an Originating Educational Organization with respect to PERTS services. An individual becomes a Authorized Organizational Representative by being the first person to register an account in association to a particular Originating Educational Organization or by being approved or invited to that role by an existing Authorized Organizational Representative. PERTS may provide Authorized Organizational Representatives with Personal Information because that person is authorized to act on behalf of the Originating Educational Organization. For example, PERTS may provide an Authorized Organizational Representative with the student IDs of students who did not complete a program so that make-up sessions can be arranged.
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