How Notegrade handles student data
This page is a draft and has not been reviewed by a lawyer yet. It describes how Notegrade works today. It is not a data privacy agreement.
The short version
- Essays are stored in Notegrade’s own AWS account in the United States, encrypted at rest.
- Student essays are never used to train AI models.
- We do not sell student data, and there are no ads.
- Teachers control what students see. Nothing reaches a student until the teacher reviews it and returns grades.
- A school can ask us to delete its data at any time, and we confirm in writing when it is done.
- While a student writes, Notegrade records the essay and how it was written on that page only. It does not record other tabs, the camera, or the microphone.
Data we keep
| What | Why | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Student name and school email, from the class roster the teacher enters | So the teacher knows whose essay it is, and so the student can sign in | The teacher of that class |
| Student number, if the teacher adds it | So grades can be imported into the school’s gradebook system | The teacher of that class |
| Sign-in with the student’s school Google account | Notegrade receives only the verified email address and checks it against the class roster. It does not receive the password or anything else in the Google account. | Nobody; it is checked and not stored beyond the roster email |
| Essay text and saved drafts | The assignment itself, and autosave so work is not lost | The teacher; the student sees their own essay |
| Time spent writing | Part of the writing record | The teacher |
| Characters typed and deleted, and number of revisions | Part of the writing record | The teacher |
| Paste attempts (paste is blocked) | Part of the writing record | The teacher |
| Large blocks of text that appear at once | Part of the writing record; dictation can cause these | The teacher |
| Accommodations set by the teacher | Extra time and similar settings for one student | The teacher. Never sent to the grading model. |
| Teacher account email | Sign in | The teacher |
| Rubrics, calibration scores, draft scores and teacher decisions | Drafting scores and recording the teacher’s grade | The teacher; students see the returned parts the teacher chooses to show |
| Notes on how an essay was written, and passages that match a classmate’s essay on the same assignment | So the teacher can see what stood out and talk with the student. Worked out from the writing record and the essays in Notegrade; nothing is sent to an outside service. | The teacher only. Never shown to students, never used in grades or exports. A teacher can turn these notes off for a class. |
| Essays and scores in department norming | So colleagues can compare how they score the same essays. Teachers are asked to remove student names from any essay they paste. | The teachers in that norming session; individual scores are shown to no one but the teacher who gave them |
| A student’s note that a returned comment is wrong, and the teacher’s reply | So the student can ask about a point and get an answer | The teacher and that student |
The writing record is evidence for the teacher, not a verdict. It is never shown to students and never used to grade.
How long we keep it
We keep a school’s data while the school uses Notegrade. When a school stops using Notegrade, or asks us to delete its data, we delete it within 60 days. Database backups are kept for 14 days, so deleted data is gone from backups within 14 days after that. Application logs hold ids only and are kept for 90 days.
Data we do not collect
Birth date, home address, location, photos, camera, microphone, other tabs or websites, keystroke-by-keystroke recordings, and anything after the student submits.
Where it lives
Notegrade runs in its own AWS account in the United States. Essays and scores are stored in an encrypted Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL database in the US East (N. Virginia) region. When an essay is scored, it is processed by Amazon Bedrock within AWS regions in the United States and is not stored there. Application logs record ids, not essay text, names or emails. Each change a teacher makes, and each export, is recorded with who made it and when.
How draft scores are made
- A student submits an essay, and it is saved in Notegrade’s AWS account.
- Notegrade sends the essay, the assignment prompt, the rubric and the teacher’s scored calibration essays to a Claude model made by Anthropic, through Amazon Bedrock in that same AWS account. Student names and accommodations are not sent.
- The model returns draft scores and suggested deductions. The teacher accepts or rejects each one.
- The teacher returns grades. Students see nothing before that.
Per AWS, Amazon Bedrock does not store prompts or outputs and does not share them with model providers. Read the AWS page.
Subprocessors
- Amazon Web Services: hosting, database, file storage, sign-in, and access to the grading model through Amazon Bedrock.
- Anthropic: developer of the Claude model used for draft scores. The model is reached through Amazon Bedrock, and per AWS, prompts are not shared with the model provider.
- Google: student sign-in with the school Google account. Google tells Notegrade the student’s verified email address and name.
Any company that runs plagiarism or AI-use checks for Notegrade will be listed here before those checks are turned on.
Deleting data
A teacher can delete a class from the class page, or one student from that student’s page, at any time. The deletion is permanent and happens right away: for a class, its assignments, its roster and every essay those students wrote; for a student, every essay, draft and mark that student has in any of the teacher’s classes.
A school or district can ask us to delete its data, or a teacher can ask us to delete their whole account, at any time. We delete the data within 60 days of the request, and we confirm in writing when it is done. Deleted data is gone from database backups within 14 days after that.
If something goes wrong
If we learn that student data was accessed without permission, we will tell the affected schools within 72 hours of confirming it. We will say what happened, what data was involved, and what we are doing about it, and we will help schools meet their own notice duties to families.
Questions
Email matt@notegrade.com with any question about student data, or to ask for a record or a deletion. For how Notegrade is built and run, read the security page.