iMath · for teachers to share with their principal

What iMath knows about your students: almost nothing

iMath is a free math-fact fluency game (think Reflex-style practice) a class plays a few minutes a day. This page explains, in plain language, exactly what it stores, what it can never store, and why the laws that usually require district paperwork are not triggered by using it.

Every player is a made-up name. When a student joins, the game rolls them a silly nickname — ZippyWaffle, SunnyNarwhal, TurboPickle — from a fixed, hand-screened word list. There is nowhere in the game for a child to type their name, or any words at all. The teacher writes down which student is which nickname, on paper, and that list never enters the system. We could not identify a student even if we were asked to.

Everything we store

  • The made-up nickname (and the cube color & emoji the child picked)
  • Which class group the player belongs to
  • Math-fact progress: which facts were practiced, right and wrong answers
  • When the player practiced (so streaks work)
  • A 4-digit PIN, stored scrambled. (Students are not currently asked to type one — see the note below.)

What we never collect

  • Names — not even first names
  • Student ID or roster numbers
  • Emails, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers
  • Photos, audio, or video — the game never uses a camera or microphone
  • Location
  • Anything typed — there is no chat and no text box
  • Ads or ad trackers — none, ever

Progress is saved on the classroom's own devices. If cloud saving is turned on for a class, the same progress is saved under the made-up nickname only, encrypted in transit and at rest.

Why this doesn't trigger the usual permission process

COPPA (federal, children's online privacy) — requires parental consent when a service collects children's personal information: names, contact details, photos, and the like. iMath collects none of these. Its login exists solely to save a player's own game progress, which the rule expressly exempts as "support for internal operations." There is no data collection here for a parent to consent to.
FERPA (federal, education records) — protects school records that identify a student. iMath's records describe SunnyNarwhal. The only key connecting that name to a child is the teacher's own paper list, which stays in the classroom under the school's control.
SOPIPA (California's student-privacy law) — binds us automatically, with no signatures needed, and we meet every requirement: no advertising, no profiling, no selling or sharing of student data, reasonable security, and complete deletion of a class's data the moment a school asks.
Ed. Code 49073.1 / AB 1584 (pupil-records contracts) — its contract checklist applies when a district signs a contract for services that hold identifiable pupil records. With no contract and no identifiable records, there is nothing for it to attach to.

If your district would like paperwork anyway, we're glad to provide it. We will sign the standard California Student Data Privacy Agreement on request — the "data elements collected" exhibit is one short, pleasant row. And if your school has its own review process for classroom tools, that of course still applies; this page is meant to make that review easy, not to skip it.

A note on PINs, so the list above is not misleading. Every player still has a 4-digit PIN, still stored scrambled — but students are not currently asked to type one, because each child in this class has their own device. In practice that means anyone holding a class join link can open any player in that class. We are comfortable with that only because there is nothing behind the door but a made-up nickname and a list of math facts: no name, no student number, nothing that identifies a child. If devices are ever shared, PINs come back.

Deleting everything is one email. Ask, and every trace of a class — nicknames, progress, PINs — is permanently deleted. There are no backups we keep "just in case."

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