District Overview

TCT helps math teachers implement Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC), a widely-adopted instructional approach built on randomized student groups working at vertical whiteboards. The app generates random, constraint-aware groups; lets teachers give quick, formative feedback on collaboration and engagement (not academic grades); tracks that feedback per student over time; and lets teachers photograph and label student board work for later reference. It is a teacher productivity tool — students do not log in, and the app does not replace the district's gradebook or student information system.

TCT is architected so that no student name ever reaches our servers — not from Google Classroom import, and not from manual entry. When a teacher imports a class roster from Google Classroom, the request goes directly from the teacher's browser to Google's Classroom API — student names, emails, and course details are fetched and cached locally in the browser (IndexedDB) and are never routed through or stored on our servers. When a teacher types a student's name in manually instead, that name is used only to display the roster in the browser; the record sent to our server contains no name at all.

The only data that reaches our servers (hosted on Neon, a serverless Postgres provider) is: an opaque, sequential student number assigned per class period; Google's own opaque student identifier (present only for imported students, null otherwise); rubric scores; and group assignments. Our database schema has no column capable of storing a student's name — that capability was intentionally removed. The teacher's own browser maps student numbers back to names for display.

• ✓ No student names on our servers, ever

  Whether a student is imported from Google Classroom or typed in by hand, their name never crosses the wire to our servers. Our database has no column that can even hold a student name.

• ✓ Roster data stays in the browser

  Full Google Classroom roster details, and any manually-typed names, are cached directly in the teacher's browser — never transmitted to or stored on our servers.

• ✓ No student accounts

  Students never log in and never provide information directly — only the teacher's browser fetches and enters data, and only for their own class.

• ✓ Not graded, not shared with students

  Feedback tracked in the app is formative (collaboration, persistence, engagement) and is teacher-only — it does not appear on a report card and is not currently visible to students.

• ✓ No ads, no data sale

  Student information is never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to build behavioral profiles.

• ✓ District-controlled sign-in

  Teachers authenticate with their school Google account (OAuth 2.0) — no separate password to manage or lose.

• ✓ Read-only Classroom access

  The app requests only classroom.courses.readonly and classroom.rosters.readonly scopes — it cannot modify anything in Google Classroom.

• ✓ Teacher-scoped access

  Each teacher only ever sees their own rosters and data; there is no cross-teacher visibility.

When a district authorizes a teacher's use, TCT operates as a "school official" with a legitimate educational interest under FERPA's school-official exception (34 CFR § 99.31(a)(1)) — the same basis districts already rely on for many classroom tools. TCT does not use student information for any purpose beyond providing the service to the teacher, and the district/school retains ownership of the underlying education records at all times.