Privacy Policy

Table of Contents

• 1. Summary
• 2. Information We Collect
• 3. How Concord Consortium Uses the Data Collected
• 4. Information Security
• 5. Changing Your Information/Opting Out
• 6. Visitors from Outside of the United States
• 7. Notices for California Users
• 8. Changes and Updates to this Policy & Contact Information

1. Summary

The Concord Consortium respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your information through compliance with this policy.

This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you, or that you may provide when you visit the website(s) or access services and applications via concord.org (“Site”). Also, this policy describes Concord’s practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting and disclosing the information collected via the Site. Specifically, this policy applies to information we collect:

• through your use of this Site, including if you subscribe to our free publications
• through your use of our software or our mobile applications (“Apps”); and
• via e-mail, text, and other electronic communications processed through your use of the Site

This policy does not apply to:

• information we collect offline or through any other means outside of the Site; or
• information collected by other parties, including through any third party application or content that may link to or be accessible from or on the Site, unless we tell you otherwise in this policy.

Please read this policy carefully. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, you may refrain from using this Site. If you have questions about this policy, please feel free to email Concord at: privacy@concord.org.

This policy was last updated on November 5, 2019.

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2. Information We Collect and How Information is Collected

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Site and Apps. These include:

Personal Information

“Personal Information” generally means information or data that can be used to identify an individual person, and with respect to our Site, is information you have provided to us. Some of our services, such as subscription to our newsletter or the use of activities with enabled classroom reporting, require the creation of a Concord Consortium student or teacher account, processes which may require the collection of personal information.

When creating a Concord Consortium account as a teacher, you may be asked to provide your first and last name, email address, password, your role, country, state, district, school name, class descriptions, and grade. To create a Concord Consortium account as a student, you will be asked to enter your name, a password, and the class word you have been given by your teacher. Students may enter pseudonyms or code names in place of their real name to avoid entering any individually identifiable information into our system.

If you wish to subscribe to the Newsletter, you may be asked to provide your first and last name, email address, phone number, name of school, grade, and courses you teach. We also may collect personal information when you contact us with questions, or respond to a survey that we might ask you to complete or if you input personal information into a web query available via the Site.

We do not make your profile visible or available to the general public. Our use of the information above is described below in the “How Concord Uses the Data Collected” section.

Non-Personal Information/Automatically Collected

“Non-personal information” as used in this policy means information or data that is not traceable back to an individual person. This information cannot be used to identify individual users of the Site. Regardless of user account status, we collect some types of non-personal information automatically. Non-personal information can be broken down into two large categories: the first is data collected automatically from your browser or your device when you use our Site and mobile Apps, such as the frequency and duration of your visits, operating system, hardware version, device settings, file and software names and types, battery and signal strength, device identifiers, and IP addresses. We also use cookies, described in greater detail below.

The second category of non-personal information includes information about how the Site and Apps are being used, and may include a user’s actions, such as mouse clicks, time on task, and navigation through the Site and Apps. We also pay attention to certain demographic information such as geography. Some of this information can be associated with an individual user.

Information/Volunteered

Some services or areas of our Site include options to input additional information about yourself or preferences regarding our Site. For example, you can – but are not required to – add biographical information, designate resources as “favorites,” add resource ratings, respond to surveys, provide a social media profile (via URL link), and provide answers to activity and pre/post test questions.

In addition, the Site provides you with the opportunity to leave comments or participate in forums, which are sometimes hosted by third parties. Any information you choose to provide in these comment and forum areas, however characterized, will be at your option and is therefore completely voluntary. Unless otherwise expressly provided for in this policy, the Concord Consortium shall have no liability to you or to any third party with respect to information submitted voluntarily by you via the Site.

Cookies

Like most websites, whether or not you are a registered member, we may send one or more cookies – small text files containing a string of alphanumeric characters – to your device. Cookies remember information about your activities on a website and enable us to provide you with a more personalized learning experience. Concord uses both session cookies and persistent cookies. A session cookie disappears automatically after you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to the Site. You can remove a persistent cookie at any time, although the application or service may not remember your previous settings. If you turn off cookies altogether, you will not have access to certain services and features on the Site.

Third-Party Service Providers

The Concord Consortium uses a variety of third-party service providers to operate this Site and provide the services found here. These third parties include but are not limited to Google Analytics to help us understand our Site usage; Survey Monkey, to facilitate and process user surveys; MailChimp, to facilitate the distribution of our email Newsletter; Amazon Web Services, which provides servers to host our Sites, and NewRelic, which monitors performance of our Sites. In some cases, these third parties place and read their own cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect information through the Site. Some of the third-party service providers have access to certain personal information (as described above); and in other cases, they have access to only non-personal information. If required under applicable law, the Concord Consortium engages third-party service providers under written agreements that limit the third-party service provider’s use of personal information in a manner consistent with this policy.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google. We use Google Analytics to track information, such as how many people visit our websites, pages they view, links they click, and more. We do not use the advertising features of Google Analytics on our websites.

If you do not wish to have any of your usage data collected by Google Analytics, Google has developed an Opt-out Browser add-on, which is available on the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on page.

Links to Third-Party Websites & Services

The Site and Apps may contain links to and may be linked by websites operated by other entities or individuals not owned by Concord Consortium, and not otherwise under our control. For example, Concord uses FastSpring to provide our online storefront functionality and process payments for our Fathom software. This policy does not apply to, and Concord Consortium has no control over, the activities of such other third-party websites and/or services. You should consult the respective privacy policies of those third-party websites and services before inputting any personal information.

Integrated Social Media Sites

The Site and Apps may now or in the future include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button, and the Twitter Tweet button, among others. We may also permit registration via these social media services. Please be aware that social media features and sites may collect your IP address, monitor which pages you are visiting on our Site, and set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these social media features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing each social media feature. If you are not comfortable accessing such social media websites and using such social media features, please refrain from doing so.

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3. How Concord Consortium Uses the Data Collected

Generally

Section 2 above addresses a few ways in which we use your information. In addition, we use information:

• To present our Site and its contents to you.
• To better understand user behavior in order to improve the services we provide to you and others.
• To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us, including responses to your inquiries.
• To provide you with communications about your accounts and subscriptions.
• To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
• To notify you about changes to our Site or any services we offer or provide though it.
• To contact you for potential participation in research and related projects.
• To allow you to participate in interactive features on our Site and Apps.
• In any other way we may describe when you provide the information.

We do not sell your information under any circumstances, and we do not provide user profiles to the public.

We may disclose your information (including, in some cases, personal information), as follows:

• When we work with other partners, in order for them to perform their specialized functions. In such cases, these partners do not have the right to use personal user information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us. Additionally, these partners must adhere to confidentiality and security obligations in a way that is consistent with this policy.
• When presenting our material at conferences, to potential partners, or when describing Concord Consortium materials. In these cases, no matter whether presented in aggregated or unaggregated form, the information presented will not contain personal information.
• To a successor in the event of a merger, consolidation, restructuring, reorganization or transfer of some or all of Concord’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Concord about our Site users is among the assets transferred or consolidated.
• In cases where you have provided your express consent.
• As required by applicable law.
• If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Concord or other users.

Human Subjects Institutional Review Board

Concord Consortium conducts research on many projects, which have often made pioneering contributions that have shaped the field. A Human Subjects Institutional Review Board (HSIRB) review is required when conducting federally funded research on humans. Data is shared with research partners as described in individual data sharing and HSIRB agreements associated with our different research projects. When working with research partners and the HSIRB, all shared data is non-personally identifiable, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the applicable signed permissions form.

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4. Information Security

You can help us protect against unauthorized access to your account by keeping your passwords secret at all times.

The security of your personal information is important to us. We work hard to protect the Site and our community, and we maintain administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect against unauthorized use, disclosure of, or access to personal information. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure; and Concord Consortium therefore cannot warrant or guarantee absolute security of the Site or your data.

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5. Changing Your Information; Opting Out

Changing or Requesting Access to Your Information

You may update, correct, or delete some of your profile information or your preferences at any time by logging into your account on the Site. You may also, at any time, update, correct, or delete certain personal information that you have provided to us by contacting us at privacy@concord.org.

In addition, you may request access to the personal information we have on file by emailing us at privacy@concord.org. We will use all reasonable efforts to accommodate your request. (Note: We may not be able to fulfill requests that are unreasonably repetitive, require disproportionate technical effort, or are impractical.)

Opting Out

When using our Site, you are always given the option to opt in to particular services and communications. When registering or subscribing, simply leave option boxes empty for items you are not interested in receiving, or uncheck any pre-checked option boxes. To unsubscribe from a Newsletter, please follow the unsubscribe link provided in the accompanying email message. You can also log into your account at any time and select or de-select the various options.

You can always decline to provide us with personal or other voluntary information, and/or can reject cookies. However, it’s important to remember that many of our services may not be accessible or may not function properly if you do so.

Data Retention

Unless otherwise required by applicable law, we will retain your information for as long as the Site is active.

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6. Visitors from Outside of the United States

Currently, our Site is operated and managed by the Concord Consortium within the United States of America. However, Concord Consortium uses third parties (currently Amazon Web Services) to host the Site, and has no control over the exact location of the data servers.

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7. Notices for California Users

California Children’s Privacy Rights

If you are under the age of 18, or the parent of a user under the age of 18, and residing in California, you are entitled to request removal of content or information you have posted on our Site. If you would like to request removal of your or your child’s content or information, please email us at privacy@concord.org for assistance or you can delete specific information. Please note that removal of your content or information does not ensure complete or comprehensive removal, as there may be de-identified or recoverable elements of your content or information on our servers in some form. Additionally, we will not remove content or information that we may be required to retain under applicable federal and state laws.

California Do Not Track Notice

Concord Consortium does not itself track its users over time and across third-party websites to provide targeted advertising and, therefore, does not respond to Do Not Track (DNT) signals. For more information on “do not track,” please visit www.allaboutdnt.org.

Third parties that have content embedded in this Site, such as a social media features, may set cookies on a user’s browser and/or obtain information about the fact that a user visited the Site from a certain IP address. Unless otherwise noted in this policy, third parties cannot collect any other personally identifiable information from our Site unless you provide it to them directly.

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8. Changes and Updates to this Policy & Contact Information

Changes and Updates to this Policy

We may occasionally update this policy. You can see when the last update was by looking at the “Last updated” date near the beginning of this policy. If we make any significant changes, we will post a prominent notice on the Site home page.

We encourage you to review this policy from time to time to stay informed about our collection, use, and disclosure of personal information through the Site. By continuing to use the Site after we post a notice indicating the policy has been changed, you acknowledge that you accept and agree to the then-current version of this policy.

Concord Consortium Contact Information

If you have any questions or concerns about this policy or how we use and protect your information, please contact us at privacy@concord.org; or by writing to us using the following details:

The Concord Consortium, Inc.
25 Love Lane
Concord, MA 01742
978-405-3200

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