Privacy Policy

Last Updated:  August 1, 2024

The EarlyBird Education website(s), application(s), and software platform(s), including Pip School, that operate in connection with The EarlyBird Solution, an early literacy assessment platform (collectively, the  “Services”) are owned and operated by EarlyBird Education. EarlyBird Education is committed to protecting your privacy. By using the Services and visiting any websites owned and operated by EarlyBird Education, you accept and consent to this Privacy Policy. Your use of EarlyBird Education’s products or services is, at all times, subject to the EarlyBird Education Terms of Service, which include this Privacy Policy and the Data Privacy Agreement (“DPA”) between you and EarlyBird Education. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. Capitalized terms that are not otherwise defined herein have the meaning provided in the Terms of Service.

As used in this Privacy Policy, “we,” “our” or “us” refers to EarlyBird Education. “You,” “yours” or other similar designation refers to an individual or entity that visits our website as  well as an entity or institution or individual that accesses or uses the Services, including but not limited to  local educational agencies (“LEAs”), state educational agencies, (“SEAs”), other educational  institutions, providers of preschool and other early childhood education programs, parents, or guardians.

Please see our Children’s Privacy section for information our data collection, use, and disclosure practices for students under 13.

Information We May Collect

Information You Provide to Us.

You may provide us with information about you when you correspond with us via our website, or via phone, e-mail, postal mail, or in another manner. You may also provide us with information about you if you are an authorized user of the Services. The information you give us may include your name, relationship to child, address, e-mail address, phone number, job title, and description. Pip School users are required to provide us with an email and password to use those services (no information from the student is required to be provided as part of the Pip School offering). 

Information We Collect About You via Our Website.

When you visit our websites, we or our  third-party service providers may automatically collect the following information for analytics  purposes: Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses, preferences, web pages that you visited prior to  visiting our website, information about your browser, network, or device (such as browser type  and version, operating system, Internet service provider, preference settings, unique device IDs,  and language and other regional settings), and information about how you interact with our  website (such as timestamps, clicks, scrolling, browsing times, searches, transactions, referral  page, load times, and problems you may encounter, such as loading errors).

We or our third-party service providers may also use “cookies” to help personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web page server.  Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you. We and our third-party service providers use some necessary cookies because they allow visitors to navigate and use key features of our website, as well as analytics and performance cookies to collect information about how visitors interact with our website.

Information We Collect About Students Through the EarlyBird Solution.

The EarlyBird Solution allows an authorized user, such as an educator or parent or guardian, to roster their students to run an early literacy  assessment. When this occurs, we generate and maintain a participant code that is associated with the student. We also collect the following information in order to generate a risk assessment related to early literacy:

  • Your student’s name, date of birth, grade level, and school
  • You student’s school ID and school email
  • Your student’s response to assessment questions
  • The response time associated with your student’s response to assessment questions
  • Your student’s voice data for portions of the assessment that require your student to repeat words
  • Your student’s socioeconomic status
  • Whether your student has a family history of reading struggles, has an individualized education program (IEP), or is an English language learner (ELL)
  • Educational records that may be protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 C.F.R. Part 99; “FERPA”).

Information We Receive from Others.

We may receive information about you if you use any of the websites we operate or become an authorized user of the Services. If this occurs, we will inform you when we collect that data that it may be shared internally and/or in combination with  data collected on our website.

How We Use and Share the Information We Collect

How We Use the Information We Collect.

We use the information we collect to establish and maintain your account in order to provide you with access to the Services, and to provide you with the results of assessments that you conduct for your students. We also use this information to conduct research and analysis to operate, evaluate, and improve the Services, for educational purposes, or as required by law.

With respect to student users of the Services, we do not require students to provide more personal information than is reasonably necessary to utilize the Services. In fact, The EarlyBird Solution does not allow authorized users to provide any more personally identifiable data than is  reasonably necessary to utilize the Services.

How We Share the Information We Collect.

We do not sell you or your student’s personal information. We will not share you or your student’s personal information or user data except as described herein and in the Terms of Service, or unless we otherwise obtain your authorization to  do so.

We share a very limited amount of de-identified information of student users of The EarlyBird Solution with our service providers, Speechace LLC and Soapbox Labs, to help them understand the customers we serve, and to deliver the Services to you.

Specifically, we share de-identified voice recordings of  students that have utilized the assessment tool with our service provider; however, before sharing  this data, we take steps to ensure that the data does not contain any personally identifiable  information and that de-identified information cannot be re-identified by unauthorized third  parties. We also take steps to ensure that our service provider maintains appropriate confidentiality, security, and other requirements we have deemed necessary to protect your data from unauthorized disclosure. Our service provider takes steps to protect de-identified user data that we share with it in a manner consistent with the practices addressed in this Privacy Policy.

We may also share personally identifiable or de-identified information with authorized  individuals who perform tasks on our behalf, such as employees and contractors who need  information in order to deliver the Services to you. We employ safeguards to ensure that these authorized individuals do not: (1) use the information for any purpose other than to deliver the Services to you or as otherwise authorized by the Terms of Service or this Privacy Policy, or (2) disclose the information to unauthorized parties.

In some cases, we may be required to share your information pursuant to a lawful request such as a court order or subpoena, or when otherwise required by law. We may also share your information under the following circumstances:

  • In connection with an investigation of suspected unlawful activity;
  • When we determine that disclosure is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of EarlyBird Education, our customers, or other third parties; and
  • In the event of a corporate sale, merger, acquisition, dissolution, or other similar event.

Third Party Links.

When visiting our website or using the Services, you may encounter links to web pages and sites which are not owned or controlled by EarlyBird Education. EarlyBird Education makes no warranties or claims regarding services from these sites, and no such warranties or claims should be implied or assumed. EarlyBird Education encourages you to review the privacy statements and policies of websites you choose to link to from EarlyBird  Education so that you can understand how those websites collect, use, and share your  information. EarlyBird Education is not responsible for the privacy policies, statements, or other content on websites not owned or controlled by EarlyBird Education.

How We Store and Protect the Information We Collect

How We Protect Your Personal Information.

EarlyBird Education uses various security measures, including physical, administrative, and technical measures, to help protect your  information and to help prevent unauthorized access to, or disclosure of, your information. We require our employees to comply with information security safeguards, and our systems are  protected by technological measures to help prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining  access. For example, among other measures, we ensure that all data is encrypted using a Transport Layer Security (“TLS”) certificates during transmission. All data that is stored is encrypted at rest, and no production or customer data is stored outside of the underlying infrastructure, which  uses Virtual Private Clouds (“VPCs”) for all environments.

Notwithstanding these precautions, no system can be completely secure and there remains a risk that unauthorized access or use, hardware or software failure, or a number of other factors may  compromise the security of your information. Upon discovery of any unauthorized acquisition of user personal information, EarlyBird Education will take immediate measures to safeguard and prevent further dissemination of any such personal information. When reasonably able to do so, EarlyBird Education will notify the impacted parties via contact information on record, and such notifications will include information required by applicable data breach notification laws.

How We Protect Student Privacy.

Protecting the privacy of students who use the Services is especially important to us, and we take our obligation to protect student data seriously. We maintain compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) with respect  to personal information we collect from children under the age of 13 (see our Children’s Privacy section, below, for more information). We also have a Data Privacy Agreement, which we enter into with educational entities, that further describes our  duties, responsibilities, and commitments with respect to student data that we collect or receive.

Information we collect from students may include student educational records that are protected under FERPA and other laws. We abide by the following terms with respect to the privacy of student educational records:

  • Student records obtained by EarlyBird Education from an educational institution or parent or guardian continue to be the property of and under the control of the educational institution or the parent or guardian. The educational institution or parent or guardian retains full ownership rights to the personal information and education records it provides to EarlyBird Education.
  • EarlyBird Education will not use any information in a student education record for any purpose other than those required or specifically permitted by this Agreement.
  • Parents, legal guardians, or eligible students may review personally identifiable information in the student’s records and correct erroneous information by contacting their educational institution (provided the foregoing does not apply to Pip School users).
  • EarlyBird Education is committed to maintaining the security and confidentiality of student records. In the event of a data breach, EarlyBird Education will adhere to the applicable Federal and/or State data breach notification requirements. For purposes of  this policy, a breach is any unauthorized acquisition of computerized data that  compromises the security, confidentiality, or integrity of personal information that we maintain.
  • EarlyBird Education will delete or de-identify personal information under the following circumstances: (1) upon expiration or termination of our agreement with an educational institution, or (2) within sixty (60) days of receiving a written deletion request from the educational institution.
  • EarlyBird Education will work with educational institutions to ensure compliance with FERPA. EarlyBird Education prohibits using personally identifiable information in student records to engage in targeted advertising. Notwithstanding the foregoing, nothing in this Privacy Policy will prohibit EarlyBird Education from utilizing de identified user information for product development or improvement services.

Children’s Privacy

This section of the Privacy Policy provides information for schools, parents and legal guardians about our practices with respect to information that we collect from students under 13 who use our Services. We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from students under 13 years of age without a school, parent or legal guardian’s consent. In this section, we use the term “personal information” as such term is defined in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and the Federal Trade Commission’s rules implementing COPPA.

  • Parent/Legal Guardian Consent Form. When purchased directly from EarlyBird by a family (parent/legal guardian) such as Pip School, EarlyBird understands that the parent’s or legal guardian’s consent is required for the collection, use, or disclosure of such information, and EarlyBird Education will not collect, use, or disclose any personal information from the child if the parent does not provide such consent.
  • We obtain explicit consent from parent or the legal guardian of the student before administering the assessment. 
  • We keep a record of consent obtained for the purposes of this assessment. 
  • The parent or legal guardian can provide verifiable consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of the information via an online form that is administered via email prior to collecting or using the personal information.

Personal Information We Collect from Students Under 13

  • Voice data for portions of the assessment that require the student to repeat sounds or words

We may also collect information about the student’s activities on our Services, including information about the student’s device used to take the assessment, the student’s responses to assessment questions and the response time associated with the student’s response to assessment questions.

Information Uses

We use the information we collect from students under 13 only for educational purposes, including to operate, maintain, and improve the Services.

Information Disclosures

We disclose the information we collect from students under 13 in the following circumstances:

  • Teachers and Pip School users will have access to their students’ personal information. Additionally, we may make students’ personal information available to their parents upon request (provided the foregoing does not apply to Pip School users).
  • To third party service providers that assist us in providing the Services.

Requests to Access and Delete a Child’s Information

Parents and legal guardians of children under 13 may request to review the personal information collected from their child, direct us to delete the personal information we have collected from their child, and refuse to permit our further collection or use of the personal information collected from their child. To make such a request, please contact your child’s educational institution or EarlyBird Education

Operator of this Online Service / Contact Information

The operator collecting or maintaining personal information from children through this online service is EarlyBird Education, located at 163 Highland Ave, #1067, Needham, MA 02494 and info@earlybirded.wpenginepowered.com. 

Your Choices Regarding the Information We Collect

You can correct, update, or remove your personal information if it changes or if you no longer want to receive information from us beyond information related to our Services. To submit a request:

If Services were provided as a result of purchasing Services directly from EarlyBird for your child (such as Pip School), submit your request directly to EarlyBird using contact information in the “Contacting Us” section.

If Services were provided as a result of purchasing Services directly from EarlyBird for your child, submit your request directly to EarlyBird using contact information in the “Contacting Us” section.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may revise our Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this page. You can see when we last updated our policy by looking at the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page. If we make material changes to our Privacy Policy, we’ll provide a prominent notice by posting a notice via the Services, by posting  a notice on our website, and/or by notifying you via email using the email address you provided,  so you can review the updates.

We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy from time to time. Your continued use of the Services after the revised Privacy Policy has become effective constitutes your acknowledgment  and agreement to the terms included in the then current version of our Privacy Policy. If you don’t agree with any changes we make to our Privacy Policy, you may terminate your account  pursuant to the terms and conditions included in our Terms of Service and any applicable  Statement of Work that we have entered into with you.

Contacting Us

We welcome your questions and comments regarding our Privacy Policy. You may submit questions, comments, requests, and concerns regarding this Privacy Policy by sending an email  to: info@earlybirded.wpenginepowered.com. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly respond to your inquiry, and/or to identify and resolve your concern.