# FERPA and COPPA Student Privacy

Effective June 11, 2026 | Version 1.0

This document explains how The Ladder AI approaches student privacy, school deployments, and child privacy obligations.

## FERPA

FERPA governs how schools and eligible students control education records. The Ladder AI is designed to minimize student-data handling and to support institutional deployments with clear roles and written agreements when needed.

When a school, district, college, workforce program, or employer uses The Ladder AI, the parties should define:

- Which learners are authorized to use the platform.
- Whether The Ladder AI is receiving education records from the institution.
- Which records are created by the platform.
- Who can access learner transcripts, credential evidence, and validation results.
- How records are exported, corrected, retained, and deleted.

If an institutional deployment requires The Ladder AI to act as a school official, processor, or service provider under a written data agreement, that agreement controls for the deployment.

## COPPA

COPPA applies to online services directed to children under 13 or knowingly collecting personal information from children under 13. The Ladder AI is not intended for unsupervised use by children under 13.

Users under 13 may only use The Ladder AI through a parent, guardian, school, or other authorized adult pathway that satisfies applicable consent requirements.

## Privacy Commitments

The Ladder AI is designed around these commitments:

- Do not sell learner data.
- Do not use learner records for behavioral advertising.
- Minimize personal data in AI prompts and assessments.
- Use account and transcript data only for learning, certification, support, security, and platform operation.
- Support access, correction, export, and deletion requests where applicable.
- Provide institutional agreements when a deployment requires specific student-data terms.

## Institutional Use

Schools, teams, employers, and public agencies should request a written agreement before relying on The Ladder AI for required training, formal credentialing, or managed learner deployments.