A note for parents (COPPA)

BrightRubric is writing practice for students in grades 3–12. Because children use it, we built it to work with as little of your child's information as possible, and to involve you before any of your child's writing is scored or stored. This notice explains, in plain terms, what we collect, why, and the choices you have.

Before you set up: the editor stays locked

A child can browse and pick a writing prompt without an account. Writing and AI scoring stay locked until a parent creates a family account, completes the consent step, and a qualifying paid subscription transaction is confirmed. Until then:

• the BrightRubric writing editor is unavailable;
• we do not receive any essay for scoring;
• no essay text is sent to our AI scoring provider;
• scoring stays locked.

When your child picks a prompt and tries to start writing, we ask a parent to set up BrightRubric first. The prompt they chose is carried through setup, so they can pick up right where they left off.

How you consent, and what unlocks scoring

To unlock AI scoring, we require a parent or guardian to complete the consent step described here and a paid subscription. Creating an account, checking the acknowledgment box, or verifying your email — and a free trial or a $0 plan — do not, by themselves, unlock scoring. Only after a qualifying paid subscription transaction is confirmed can your child's writing be submitted for scoring.

What we collect (after consent)

• From you: your email address and a password (kept only as a secure hash). If you subscribe, our payment processor handles your card — we never see or store card numbers.
• Your prompts and schedule (optional): if you write your own practice prompts or set a writing routine, we store that prompt text and those preferences with your account so we can show them to you and your child. A routine holds only the days, a time, and your timezone — never a child's email, phone, or any contact information. A prompt you create is used and processed exactly like any other prompt when your child writes to it (see below).
• About each child: a nickname and grade level that you choose. We do not ask children for a name, email, age, or photo.
• Your child's writing: the practice essay text, the prompt, grade, and essay type, plus the resulting scores, feedback, and progress.
• How each essay was written: so your dashboard can show a simple note about how a draft was composed, we record a few composition signals for each essay — the active typing time, a count of keystrokes typed in the editor, and the number of characters pasted in. These are counts and timings only: we do not record which keys were pressed or the text that was pasted. This information is shown to you, is stored with the essay and deleted when the essay is deleted, and is never sent to Anthropic.
• Technical information needed to run and secure the service, such as a random device token and a short-lived record of the network (IP) address, used for rate-limiting and abuse prevention.

Writing can contain personal information. An essay is free-form, so it may include personal details if the child writes them. We do not ask children to include identifying information, and we encourage you and your child to leave out anything unnecessary.

How writing is used, and who processes it

After consent, your child's essay text, the prompt, grade, and essay type are transmitted to our AI processing provider, Anthropic, over an encrypted connection, for the limited purpose of generating a score and feedback. We do not send your child's nickname, your email, the device token, the IP address, or the composition signals to Anthropic. Essays are stored so your child can revise them and see progress. We do not sell your child's personal information, and we do not use your child's writing to advertise to you or to build marketing profiles.

We rely on a few service providers to operate BrightRubric, each receiving only what it needs: Anthropic (AI scoring), our hosting and database provider (running the app and storing your account and your child's work), our payment processor (your subscription — not your child's writing), and our email provider (account and, if you opt in, progress emails — not your child's writing). The current list is in the Privacy Policy.

Keeping and deleting information

We keep information only as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service and for the purposes above. From your dashboard you can, at any time, review your child's essays and feedback, unlink a device, delete a child's profile (which removes that child's essays, scores, progress, and any prompts you created only for that child), or delete your entire account (which removes every child's essays and progress, removes your account information, and cancels any active subscription). Practice data from a device that is never connected to a family account is not retained indefinitely; we remove it on our retention schedule. Certain limited records may be retained where reasonably necessary for security, billing, or operational purposes, or to comply with applicable law.

Your rights as a parent

You can review the child information available through your account, delete your child's profile or your whole account, and stop further collection by deleting the account. To ask about your child's information, contact us at support@brightrubric.com.

Not a monitoring or safety service

BrightRubric is a practice tool, not a monitoring or safety service. We do not read your child's essays to report their content to you, and we don't send you alerts about what they write. (Your dashboard does show the factual composition note described above — typing time and how much was pasted — which is about how a draft was written, not what it says.) If an essay reads as very heavy, the app may gently encourage your child to talk to a trusted adult — and that can happen for purely fictional stories too.

For full detail, read our Privacy Policy.