Public Source Data
- NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) — school & district profiles
- NCES EDGE — geographic & demographic context
- NCES EDFacts — aggregate proficiency & subgroup data
- USASpending.gov — federal grant award data
- Census SAIPE — poverty rate estimates by district
- State SEA websites — curriculum standards frameworks
What ThinkKits Stores
- School and district names, NCES IDs, locations
- Title I eligibility status (yes/no flag)
- Free and Reduced Lunch rates (aggregate %)
- Total enrollment by grade band (not individuals)
- Federal funding totals per district
- Curriculum standard nodes and alignment data
- Platform user emails and subscription tiers
Third-Party Data Sharing
- Clerk: Email + name for authentication only
- Stripe: Billing info for payment processing only
- Neo4j (Railway): Public school/district knowledge graph
- Anthropic: Public data queries for AI analysis
- Railway: Application hosting (encrypted transit)
- Pinecone: Anonymized session memory vectors
| Data Type | Source | Granularity | FERPA Applies? | ThinkKits Holds? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Student names / IDs | School SIS systems | Individual student | Yes — Protected | Never |
| Student test scores | State assessments | Individual student | Yes — Protected | Never |
| Student attendance | School SIS systems | Individual student | Yes — Protected | Never |
| Aggregate proficiency rates | NCES EDFacts | School-level % | No — Public data | Yes — KG node |
| FRL eligibility rate | NCES CCD | School-level % | No — Public data | Yes — KG node |
| Total enrollment | NCES CCD | School-level total | No — Public data | Yes — KG node |
| Federal grant totals | USASpending.gov | District-level $ | No — Public data | Yes — KG node |
| Title I eligibility status | NCES CCD | School-level flag | No — Public data | Yes — KG node |
| Curriculum standards | State SEA websites | Framework-level | No — Public data | Yes — KG node |
| Platform user email | User sign-up (adult) | Individual (adult user) | N/A — Adult user | Yes — account only |
Why ThinkKits Is Structurally FERPA-Exempt
FERPA protects personally identifiable information in student education records maintained by schools and school districts. ThinkKits is not a school, does not receive education records, does not act as a school official, and has no access to any system of records containing student-level data. Every data point in our knowledge graph is published publicly by federal agencies at the aggregate school or district level — the same data available to any member of the public at nces.ed.gov or usaspending.gov.
Aggregate Data ≠ Student PII
When we display that a school has "87% FRL eligibility" or "320 total enrolled students," this is school-level aggregate data published in the NCES Common Core of Data. It contains no information about any individual student. The 5% suppression rules applied by NCES to prevent re-identification mean that even in our source data, small subgroup cells are redacted. We receive — and display — only what NCES has already made public.