Last Updated: October 6, 2026
Writing Partners helps students grow as readers, writers, thinkers, and conversational partners. Our Services—including documents, peer discussions, teacher tools, and AI-assisted feedback—are designed to support learning while protecting students’ privacy, dignity, safety, and agency.
Writing Partners does not display third-party advertising in the Services. We do not sell, rent, or trade Student or Teacher personal information; use personal information for behavioral or targeted advertising; share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising; or conduct cross-site tracking.
This Policy explains how Writing Partners collects, uses, protects, retains, and shares information, and how we approach the responsible use of AI. It applies to WritingPartners.net and related services that link to this Policy (collectively, the “Services”).
Writing Partners uses technology, including AI-assisted features, to help students practice writing, reading, discussion, revision, and reflection. The Services are designed to support—not replace—the judgment of students, teachers, families, and schools.
AI-generated feedback is one possible source of support. It should not be treated as a final judgment about a student’s ability, character, identity, potential, academic standing, discipline, placement, or eligibility for educational opportunities.
We seek to protect the rights and dignity of every User, especially children and students. We aim to:
Collect only the personal information reasonably needed to provide the Services.
Avoid using Student data for advertising, commercial profiling, or unrelated commercial activities.
Provide respectful, age-appropriate learning experiences.
Support student expression, creativity, revision, and growth rather than reduce students to scores, labels, or automated judgments.
Avoid using AI as the sole or determinative basis for high-impact decisions about students.
Teachers and schools remain responsible for instructional, evaluative, and other educational decisions involving their students. Writing Partners’ AI features are not substitutes for professional educator judgment.
AI features are not designed to make final decisions about grading, discipline, admissions, special-education eligibility, or student placement. Where AI feedback is available to students, we will endeavor to make clear that:
The feedback is generated with AI assistance.
AI may be incorrect, incomplete, biased, or inappropriate for a particular context.
Students can question, revise, reject, or discuss feedback.
Teachers and authorized school personnel may review student work and activity, as permitted by the Services and applicable agreements.
Teachers may make particular Writing Partners available to students in their classes. Students may choose whether to use an available Writing Partner and may select or deselect available assistants where the Services provide that choice.
When reasonably practicable, Writing Partners will seek input from educators, students, families, accessibility experts, and communities affected by the Services when designing or materially changing student-facing AI features. We especially value perspectives that may be underrepresented in technology design.
Writing Partners does not use IP addresses to determine or infer a User’s location, and does not use cross-site tracking technologies. Teachers, schools, districts, and authorized Writing Partners administrators may access certain student activity or content as described in this Policy, for educational supervision, service support, safety, security, or other permitted purposes.
Writing Partners does not make AI outputs the sole or determinative basis for high-impact decisions about students. Schools and educators remain responsible for decisions that may significantly affect students.
Writing Partners makes AI-assisted Writing Partners available in three learning workspaces:
Create/Edit: drafting, writing, revising, and reflection;
Read/Annotate: responding to texts and media, annotation, and close reading; and
Discuss/Chat: academic conversation, questions, and discussion.
Depending on the Writing Partner selected, an AI-assisted feature may offer questions, prompts, suggestions, explanations, examples, summaries, or feedback intended to help a student think, read, write, discuss, revise, and reflect.
Writing Partners are not designed to produce final work for students to submit as their own. Their purpose is to encourage student thinking, authorship, revision, and constructive conversation.
AI-generated content can be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, overly general, or influenced by patterns and biases in data. It may misunderstand context, tone, dialect, multilingual writing, creative work, or a student’s intended meaning. Users should not rely on AI feedback as the sole basis for important educational or personal decisions.
Writing Partners’ AI features are not designed or represented as:
A replacement for a teacher, tutor, counselor, or parent;
A diagnostic tool for learning disabilities, mental-health conditions, or behavioral conditions;
A tool for determining a student’s intelligence, character, future potential, or worth;
A reliable detector of cheating, authorship, plagiarism, or AI use, unless a specific feature is clearly described, validated, and subject to human review; or
A source of final grades, discipline, placement, admissions, or other high-impact educational decisions.
Writing Partners will work to evaluate AI features before and after release for educational usefulness, reliability, age appropriateness, safety, and foreseeable misuse. Where appropriate, we will test features across varied writing styles, grade levels, language backgrounds, and learning contexts.
We will revise, limit, pause, or remove a feature when we identify material risks, unacceptable performance, or harms that cannot be adequately mitigated.
Writing Partners aims to provide a learning environment that respects students of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, socioeconomic backgrounds, language backgrounds, and writing traditions.
We recognize that AI systems may reflect biases, stereotypes, and unequal patterns present in their training data, design, evaluation, or real-world use. AI feedback may perform differently depending on a student’s dialect, language, cultural references, disability, writing style, or access to educational resources.
Writing Partners’ AI assistant, the Thinking Partner, includes guidance intended to reduce the risk that feedback will treat one variety of English or one writing style as the default measure of good writing. In writing conversations, the Thinking Partner is instructed to respect home-language patterns, rhythm, emphasis, storytelling, sound, sentence movement, and other language choices. It is instructed not to treat those choices as errors by default or label them as belonging to a racial or cultural language category.
The guidance directs the Thinking Partner to focus feedback on the writer’s purpose, audience, structure, effect, and choices. It calls for feedback that points to a passage, pattern, or choice without quoting the draft; avoids rewriting the student’s work, supplying replacement sentences, or prescribing fixes; and, when a student asks about grammar or conventions, explains the likely effect of a choice while leaving the decision to the writer.
The Thinking Partner’s guidance includes reference materials addressing Black Language and African American Vernacular English, as well as language features described in relation to Indian-American students. These materials inform the guidance; they do not establish that the Thinking Partner has been tested across all dialects, languages, cultures, ages, or writing contexts.
These instructions are a mitigation measure, not a guarantee. AI feedback may still misunderstand a writer’s intent or treat a language choice unfairly. Students and teachers may question or reject feedback that does not fit the writer’s purpose and report feedback they believe is inaccurate, biased, or harmful.
Writing Partners will seek to:
Test AI-assisted features for harmful stereotypes, discriminatory outputs, or uneven performance where feasible;
Review and improve prompts, system instructions, filters, and product design to reduce foreseeable bias;
Avoid presenting one standardized writing style, dialect, or cultural perspective as inherently superior;
Consider accessibility and language needs in product design and instructional guidance;
Provide ways to identify, question, or report feedback believed to be inaccurate, biased, offensive, or unfair; and
Avoid using AI outputs as the sole or determinative basis for high-impact decisions about students.
Users may report potentially biased, discriminatory, or harmful AI output to admin@writingpartners.net. Writing Partners will review reports, investigate patterns where appropriate, and take corrective action, which may include improving instructions, filters, product design, or feature availability.
Writing Partners is built to support meaningful learning relationships among students, Teachers, and school communities. Documents, discussions, and feedback tools are intended to strengthen—not displace—human conversation, peer learning, teacher guidance, and student voice.
Students may use the Services to comment on, respond to, or collaborate around documents and discussions, as enabled by their Teacher or school. Teachers and authorized school personnel may monitor student activity, comments, discussions, and documents associated with their classes or accounts, consistent with the Services and applicable school policies.
AI assistants may communicate in conversational language, but they are software tools. They do not have feelings, empathy, consciousness, personal experiences, or human judgment.
The Thinking Partner is generally available across the Create/Edit, Read/Annotate, and Discuss/Chat workspaces. It is designed to interact with students through questions, conversation, and sidebar comments on student-created or student-annotated texts. It is not a person, teacher, counselor, therapist, or other human authority.
Writing Partners will endeavor to clearly identify AI interactions as AI-assisted. We will not intentionally design AI features to encourage unhealthy emotional dependency, secrecy from trusted adults, or the belief that an AI system is a human friend or authority figure.
AI features should encourage students to think, create, revise, ask questions, and engage with feedback. We seek to avoid designs that simply generate finished work for students to submit as their own or discourage original thought and authentic learning.
We will describe our AI features and their limitations as clearly and accurately as reasonably possible. We will not claim that an AI feature is fully accurate, unbiased, able to understand every student’s context, or capable of replacing professional educator judgment.
AI systems can generate statements that sound plausible but are false or unsupported. Users should verify important factual claims using reliable sources, and teachers should guide students in evaluating AI-generated material. AI-generated content should not be treated as authoritative without review.
Student comments and replies are managed by their teachers. Student work is automatically shared with the student’s teachers. Teachers can review and report comments, but cannot remove them; site administrators can remove comments.
Site administrators do not routinely moderate peer comments after they are posted. The Services include a reporting button that alerts teachers and site administrators to reported content, including bullying, hate speech, sexual content, self-harm, threats, violence, or disclosure of personal information. Teachers or administrators may review a report and take appropriate action, such as asking for content to be corrected or removing it.
AI chat is filtered for unsafe content using scripts associated with Writing Partners and with AI assistants created by teachers or students. These filters may not identify or prevent every harmful or inappropriate response. If Writing Partners becomes aware that an AI has produced harmful or inappropriate material, it will work to remove or address it, correct the application or configuration that led to the issue, and, where appropriate, use the incident as a learning opportunity with the students involved.
Writing Partners maintains administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect User information. These may include encryption in transit, access controls, multi-factor authentication for appropriate personnel, network safeguards, data-encryption practices, and policies limiting staff access to information needed to provide and support the Services.
No online service can guarantee absolute security. Users should use strong, unique passwords and keep account credentials confidential.
Writing Partners’ reporting tools include an emergency disclaimer and response protocol. The reporting tools are not a substitute for emergency services. If someone may be in immediate danger, students should tell a trusted adult and contact local emergency services. Reports submitted through the platform should not be relied on for an immediate response.
Writing Partners collects information reasonably necessary to operate, secure, support, and improve the Services.
Student information may include:
First and last name;
Email address and account credentials;
Teacher, class, school, or school-district association;
Documents, drafts, comments, discussion posts, feedback, and other content a Student creates, uploads, or submits;
AI prompts, conversations, and feedback associated with use of AI features;
Learning and usage information, such as interactions with documents, comments, discussions, and AI tools; and
Support requests or communications sent to Writing Partners.
Teacher information may include:
First and last name, email address, and account credentials;
School, district, role, grade level, and class information;
Student-account relationships; and
Information associated with use of the Services, including settings, comments, communications, and support requests.
Writing Partners may also collect limited technical, log, security, and service-performance information necessary to operate, secure, troubleshoot, and improve the Services. This may include device or browser information, IP address, login and activity logs, request details, error information, and service-performance data. Writing Partners does not use IP addresses to determine or infer a User’s location.
Writing Partners uses limited technical information and strictly necessary first-party cookies to operate, secure, and troubleshoot the Services:
_writing_partners_session maintains a User’s session while the User moves between pages and requests within the Services. It expires when the User closes their browser.
remember_user_token helps keep a User signed in across browser sessions if the User selects “Remember me.” It remains until the User logs out, when it is cleared.
These cookies are strictly necessary for the Services to function. Writing Partners does not use cookies for advertising, behavioral advertising, cross-site tracking, or analytics and does not provide a separate cookie-consent banner or opt-out mechanism for these necessary cookies.
Writing Partners does not use tracking pixels, advertising tags, social-media pixels, third-party analytics scripts, or similar technologies to track Users across websites or applications.
Writing Partners collects standard server and application logs to operate, secure, troubleshoot, and maintain the Services. Logs may include IP address, date and time of a request, referring webpage or URL, browser version, operating system and platform information, request and error details, and other technical or troubleshooting information. Access to logs is limited to the server administrator. Writing Partners does not provide logs to separate analytics, advertising, or tracking vendors.
The hosting provider may process information stored in or transmitted through Writing Partners’ hosted infrastructure only as necessary to provide hosting, security, backup, maintenance, and support services.
Writing Partners does not currently offer a mobile application. If it introduces one, it will update this Policy to describe information collected through the application and applicable privacy choices.
Writing Partners may use User information to:
Create, administer, and secure accounts;
Provide documents, discussions, peer feedback, teacher tools, and AI-assisted features;
Associate Students with authorized Teachers, classes, schools, or districts;
Provide Teachers with student progress and activity information;
Respond to support requests and communicate about accounts or Services;
Monitor, maintain, troubleshoot, and improve the Services;
Detect abuse, security incidents, policy violations, or harmful activity;
Comply with legal obligations and protect the rights, safety, and security of Users and others; and
Create de-identified or aggregated information for lawful purposes, including research, service improvement, and evaluation.
Student writing, discussion content, AI prompts, and AI conversations can be highly sensitive. Writing Partners uses this content only as necessary to provide, secure, support, maintain, and evaluate the Services, subject to applicable agreements and law. Writing Partners does not use Student or Teacher content to train or fine-tune Writing Partners’ AI systems or third-party general-purpose AI models.
When a User makes an AI-assisted request, Writing Partners sends the AI provider the information needed to generate the response. Depending on the feature and request, this may include documents, drafts, annotations, selected text, comments, discussion posts, prompts, instructions, attached materials, or prior interactions needed for context. The provider processes the submitted information to generate a response and returns that response to Writing Partners for display in the Services.
Writing Partners may retain User inputs and AI-generated responses so Students, Teachers, and authorized school personnel can review learning interactions. These materials are User Content and are subject to the retention and deletion practices in this Policy.
Authorized Teachers, appropriate school or district personnel, and authorized Writing Partners administrators may access User Content when reasonably necessary to provide or support the Services; supervise student learning; address safety, moderation, misuse, or security concerns; respond to support requests; conduct quality assurance; or meet legal or contractual obligations. Access is subject to applicable roles, account settings, school arrangements, and agreements.
Writing Partners may use de-identified student and teacher content, including AI prompts, documents, discussions, and outputs, for research projects. Research will not use that content to train or fine-tune a large language model (LLM).
Before beginning a research project using User Content, Writing Partners will obtain review by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), or another appropriate written determination that IRB review is not required, and will obtain any school, parent or guardian, student, or other permission required by law or the IRB. An IRB determination does not replace other legally required permissions.
Research may be conducted by authorized researchers and, where permitted, qualified research collaborators. Writing Partners will not provide identifiable User Content to a collaborator unless disclosure is authorized and appropriate protections are in place. Research findings may be published or shared only in a form designed not to identify individual students.
Before retaining User Content for long-term research, Writing Partners will take reasonable steps to remove direct identifiers and reduce re-identification risk. Depending on the content and project, this may include redaction, generalization, separation of identifying information, and review for identifying details. Removing a name or account information alone may not be enough to de-identify free-text work. Writing Partners cannot guarantee that every item can be made impossible to identify or that re-identification risk is zero. If content cannot reasonably be de-identified, it will be used for research only if separately authorized and permitted.
Access to identifiable User Content and any information linking research data to a student will be limited to authorized personnel who need access for the Service, security, de-identification, or an approved research project. Access will be role-based and subject to confidentiality and security controls. Site administrators will not have general research access merely because they are administrators.
Writing Partners will follow the school’s instructions and applicable research-consent or opt-out requirements. Where required, Writing Partners will obtain separate research permission rather than rely solely on permission to use the Service. Research data will not be used to train or improve a general-purpose or commercial AI model unless that use is separately disclosed and authorized as required by law and applicable school agreements.
Writing Partners uses third-party providers to host, secure, operate, and support the Services. These providers may process personal information only as necessary to provide services to Writing Partners and subject to applicable contractual, privacy, and security obligations.
Writing Partners currently uses the OpenAI API for certain AI-assisted features. The information described above may be sent to OpenAI through the API to process an AI request. Writing Partners does not use Student or Teacher content to train or fine-tune Writing Partners’ AI systems or third-party general-purpose AI models.
Model training and data retention are separate matters. OpenAI’s API documentation describes default abuse-monitoring logs that may retain content for up to 30 days, while application-state retention can vary by API endpoint and configuration. Writing Partners will maintain and publish accurate information about the endpoints, settings, and retention controls it uses. (developers.openai.com)
Writing Partners hosts the Services using Akamai’s cloud-computing and hosting services, including Linode services. Writing Partners uses Twilio SendGrid to send transactional and service-related emails, including account-confirmation, password-reset, invitation, notification, and other service communications. SendGrid may process names, email addresses, message content, and delivery or technical metadata to provide those services.
Writing Partners may use additional providers for limited operational functions, such as security, customer support, email delivery, or hosting. It does not currently use third-party analytics providers, advertising partners, tracking pixels, or cross-site tracking technologies.
Before engaging a provider that processes Student personal information, Writing Partners evaluates the provider using a risk-based process. Where appropriate, it seeks contractual commitments requiring the provider to process information only to provide contracted services; maintain appropriate safeguards; not sell personal information or use it for targeted or behavioral advertising; notify Writing Partners of applicable security incidents; and delete or return information as required by law, contract, and Writing Partners’ instructions.
Schools, districts, and other eligible customers may contact admin@writingpartners.net to request current information about providers that process Student personal information on Writing Partners’ behalf.
Writing Partners retains information only for as long as reasonably necessary to provide and improve the Services, meet legal and contractual obligations, maintain security, resolve disputes, enforce agreements, and support legitimate recordkeeping needs.
Active account information and content: Retained while the applicable account or school relationship is active, unless deleted earlier or a different schedule is required by the school’s instructions or applicable agreement.
Inactive individual accounts: Accounts unused for 12 consecutive months may be designated inactive. Where reasonably practicable, Writing Partners will give notice before closing an inactive account.
Deleted accounts and content: Users and schools cannot currently delete accounts or content through self-service controls. When Writing Partners carries out an authorized deletion, the specified information is removed immediately from the active Service and production systems. Copies in backups may remain for up to 14 days, after which they are overwritten or deleted.
AI prompts and outputs: For deleted accounts no content is retained. If a User saves an output in a document or another content area, that saved content follows the schedule for that content area. Deleting an account or item does not necessarily delete other content, AI interaction records, technical logs, or information held separately by a service provider.
Server, application, security, and troubleshooting logs: Retained indefinitely. Access is limited to the server administrator; logs are not provided to separate analytics, advertising, or tracking vendors.
Customer-support communications: Retained for up to 24 months after the request is resolved, unless longer retention is necessary to resolve a dispute, enforce an agreement, or meet legal obligations.
Billing, tax, and transaction records: Retained for the period required by applicable law, generally up to seven years.
De-identified or aggregated information: May be retained indefinitely if it cannot reasonably be used to identify an individual, account, school, or device.
School or district account closure: Writing Partners does not currently provide a school or district data-export tool through the Service. A school official can request deletion of any or all of it's students' data. Writing Partners will do this immediately upon request, and backups will be deleted within 14 days. When Writing Partners carries out an authorized deletion, the specified information is removed immediately from active and production systems. Copies in backups may remain for up to 14 days before being overwritten or deleted.
Copies of deleted information may remain in backups for up to 14 days before being overwritten or deleted. If backup data must be restored, Writing Partners will reapply completed deletions as soon as reasonably practicable.
Users may request account deletion through available account settings, by contacting their school or Teacher where applicable, or by contacting Writing Partners. Requests concerning student accounts managed by a school or district may be directed to that school or district.
Writing Partners is intended for students to use with their teachers. Students may create or use an account only through their school; accounts cannot be created outside a school context.
When COPPA applies, Writing Partners will provide the required notice and obtain the required consent before collecting personal information from a child, unless a school-consent pathway permitted by COPPA applies. Writing Partners may rely on school authorization only when the applicable requirements are met, including that the information is collected for a school-authorized educational purpose and for the school’s use and benefit, and not for another commercial purpose. Writing Partners will provide the school with notice of its information practices. Where the school-consent pathway does not apply, Writing Partners will obtain parental consent or take another step required by law before the relevant collection or use. Other applicable laws, school or district policies, and agreements may impose additional requirements
A parent or guardian who wants to request access to or deletion of a child’s information should contact the child’s Teacher or email admin@writingpartners.net. Writing Partners will work with the Teacher or an authorized school representative to review and carry out an eligible request. Parents, students, and schools cannot currently delete accounts or content through self-service controls.
AI features are part of the Services and are not separately available for school authorization. This describes how the Services are offered; it does not change which notice, consent, or authorization requirements apply under law.
Writing Partners aims to operate consistently with applicable children’s and student-privacy laws, including COPPA, FERPA, applicable state student-privacy laws, and contractual commitments to educational institutions. Where Writing Partners provides Services to a school, district, or educational institution, it may process Student information as a school official or service provider acting on the institution’s behalf, subject to applicable agreements and law.
Writing Partners may use product design, teacher controls, reporting tools, automated safeguards, and human review to reduce the risk that Users encounter or generate harmful content or misuse the Services. Safeguards may address bullying, harassment, hate, discrimination, self-harm, violence, threats, sexual or exploitative content, personal-information sharing, and inappropriate AI outputs.
No moderation or technical safeguard is perfect. Students should avoid including unnecessary sensitive personal information in AI requests. Teachers and schools are responsible for determining whether and how the Services are appropriate for their students, configuring available classroom settings, supervising student use, and responding to student conduct or safety concerns under school policy and law.
AI-assisted outputs may be reviewed by Teachers, authorized school personnel, and Writing Partners administrators, as appropriate, to support safety, investigate reports, maintain the Services, and address misuse. Students can flag an AI response that seems unsafe, inappropriate, inaccurate, or likely to contain personal information.
Writing Partners will review credible reports and may restrict, revise, pause, or remove an AI feature or Writing Partner when necessary to address safety concerns, repeated harmful outputs, or misuse.
If there is an immediate risk of harm, Users should contact local emergency services, a trusted adult, school personnel, or an appropriate crisis resource. Writing Partners is not an emergency service.
Writing Partners will endeavor to provide clear, understandable notice when a User is interacting with an AI-assisted feature and to identify the selected Writing Partner where practical. Each AI-assisted response will be clearly labeled as AI-generated or AI-assisted. Where feasible, the interface will remind students that AI can make mistakes, that they should use their own judgment, that a Teacher may review the interaction, and that they should not include unnecessary sensitive personal information.
Where appropriate, Writing Partners will explain the feature’s purpose, the kinds of information it uses, its important limitations and risks, how Users can seek help or report a concern, and whether a Teacher can review related activity.
Writing Partners will obtain consent where required by law or applicable school agreements. The appropriate consent pathway may depend on whether an account is provided directly to a Student, through a Teacher, or through a school or district. Where feasible and appropriate, Writing Partners will provide meaningful choices about optional AI features and processing of content for model improvement.
Writing Partners may allow Teachers and Students to create Writing Partners by writing scripts or instructions that guide the output of an LLM accessed through Writing Partners’ API connection. Teachers may assign Writing Partners to students, making them available in a student’s list of assistants. Students may select or deselect from among the Writing Partners made available to them.
Because user-created scripts and attached materials can influence AI responses, Writing Partners cannot guarantee that every response will be accurate, complete, appropriate, or aligned with a particular teacher’s instructional goals. Teachers, students, and schools should use judgment when creating, assigning, and using Writing Partners.
Paul Allison, Project Director of Writing Partners, is accountable for the program’s AI safety, privacy, and fairness practices. He can be contacted at 116 Pinehurst Avenue, K43, New York, New York 10033; 1-917-612-3006.
Before releasing an application, Writing Partners conducts a risk assessment in a staging environment. Writing Partners also performs monthly audits and evaluations of its applications. Reports about governance, audits, or evaluations are available to schools or individuals upon request; Writing Partners does not regularly publish these reports.
Students can flag an AI response using the reporting tool in an AI output box. Users may also report concerns about privacy, security, AI-generated content, bias, safety, accessibility, or misuse to admin@writingpartners.net. Writing Partners tracks incidents and complaints, investigates credible reports, and, where appropriate, takes action such as correcting data, removing or restricting content, improving safeguards, contacting an affected school, suspending a feature, or providing other remediation.
If Writing Partners identifies a problem, it will make changes intended to help prevent similar incidents. If a student is harmed, Writing Partners will work to correct the application and work with the student’s Teacher to address the problem. Writing Partners will notify the school and Teachers associated with an affected User about an AI-related incident and will provide notices when required by law, contract, or the circumstances of the incident.
If Writing Partners materially changes this Policy, it will post an updated version with a revised “Last Updated” date. If a change materially affects how previously collected personal information is used or disclosed, Writing Partners will provide additional notice and obtain consent where required by law.