Our Data Commitments
Promise Partners believe that safe, effective data use – combined with expertise from parents and guardians, community organizations and students – empowers students and helps them to start kindergarten ready to learn, excel in school, graduate, complete a degree or credential that leads to financial stability, and live healthy lives.
A Resource for Parents, Students, and Community Members
The Role of Data: Our Guiding Principles
Promise Partnership Utah and our partners recognize that our most complex social problems – including the opportunity gap, poverty, and healthcare access – cannot be solved by any one organization. It is only by coming together with a rigorous collective impact approach that we can change the odds for all children and families. This requires that we:
- Share responsibility for giving all children a quality education, ensuring access to quality healthcare, and ending the cycle of poverty
- Focus on the same outcomes
- Create shared plans for achieving those outcomes
- Communicate regularly and authentically among ourselves
We work to help communities by aligning the efforts of our Promise Partners, including community organizations, healthcare providers, government agencies, school districts, philanthropic groups, and businesses. This collaboration requires us to share data.
What is Data?
We think of data as information to make decisions in policies, practices, resources, and power structures that produce equitable outcomes across a variety of constituent groups. Often, when people use the word data, they’re referring to data that is about individuals impacted by our current systems. When we say “data.”, we mean data about outcomes at a community-wide scale, data about systems and institutions, and data that represents the perspectives and experiences of youth, their family members, and other community members.
Why do we share Data?
Promise Partnership Utah aims to ensure the success of all students in the district by providing comprehensive support and services to meet their needs. As an organization, we work to do everything possible to center students and their families. We organize ourselves and our supporting infrastructure to ensure that we can show up as a united team in support of the goals we share for Utah children. Sharing data enables us to better support student academic and socioemotional outcomes and enables our partners to improve services for Utah's children.
Who are Promise Partners? What do they do?
Promise Partners are organizations from a wide variety of cross-sector areas. These partners provide services such as after-school programming, summer school, tutoring, mentoring, basic needs support, and referrals to other community resources like healthcare or housing assistance.
What data is shared with Promise Partners? What is the data used for?
Students’ education and related information includes demographics, attendance, grades, and test scores. This is used to evaluate student success and needs, tailor services, assess program impact, and connect you and your child to additional resources that best serve you.
Sharing data enables Promise Partners to work together around shared priorities, set plans of action, personalize learning experiences, learn what is working and what needs improvement, communicate about successes and challenges with students and families, and make decisions.
Promise Partners
- 211 Utah
- Asian Association of Utah
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Utah
- Boy Scouts of America: Crossroads of the West Council
- Catholic Community Services of Utah
- City of Millcreek
- Community Nursing Services
- English Skills Learning Center
- International Rescue Committee
- Junior Achievement of Utah
- Latinos in Action
- Mark Miller Subaru
- Comunidades Unidas
- Midtown Health Center
- Promise South Salt Lake / City of South Salt Lake
- Salt Lake Community College
- Salt Lake County Youth Services
- United Way of Northern Utah
- University of Utah Reading Clinic
- Utah Afterschool Network
- Utah Community Action
- Utah Partners for Health
Data Use and Sharing Principles
Shared accountability: We believe everyone in the community is accountable for student success. Students, parents and guardians, school officials, community organizations, government organizations, businesses, and policymakers are all responsible for how every child is doing right now and for achieving better, more equitable results in the future. We believe that the trained service providers working day-to-day with our children should work together, agree upon shared measures of success, use aggregate data related to those measures to inform their work, and – in some cases – use individual-level information to support specific individuals. We believe that data is never evidence of the success or failure of any one program, organization, sector, or group of people.
Ongoing data capability-building: We believe students do best when they are surrounded by professionals in schools and in the community who have ongoing training and support to use information to help students succeed. Promise Partnership Utah helps to provide such support through a variety of resources.
Privacy: We take privacy seriously and invest significant resources in protecting the individual-level information with which we have been entrusted. Individual-level information is ONLY shared with a small subset of Promise Partners who work directly with students on educational outcomes. Individual-level data might be shared among this small group of service providers ONLY when the following conditions have been met:
- a parent or guardian has given written consent to share information;
- the service provider has signed a data sharing agreement;
- service provider employees have signed data confidentiality agreements and completed FERPA training;
- the service provider works in the student’s community; and
- the service provider “needs to know” the information, because knowing it will help them support an individual’s success.
Transparency: We believe in being clear about what student information we are collecting, who it is being shared with and for what reasons, and how it is being protected. See below for information on what information we are collecting, who is seeing it, and for what reasons.
Additional Resources
Data Consent FormCover LetterPromise Partnership Utah Privacy PolicyData Confidentiality AgreementFrequently Asked Questions
FAQ SheetData Sharing
Please reference the sections below for further information on what data we are collecting, who is seeing it, and for what reasons.
Why is individual-level information being collected, and what is being done with it?
Individual-level information is ONLY shared with a small subset of Promise Partners who meet our privacy policy criteria above.
Here are some ways individual-level information is used when these conditions exist:- A small subset of Promise Partners work directly with students to set goals and plan programming that addresses the students’ strengths and needs.
- While a trained service provider works with a student, they use timely and quality student information to see where the student might need support. For example, if a student is struggling in algebra or not attending history class regularly, the information helps the partner work with parents, guardians and the student, so the student does not get off track.
- Trained service providers with access to information meet with one another and with school officials to review the information, collaborate, talk about what is working well, and adjust their work to meet students’ needs. Student information helps these partners support students, parents and guardians, and each other, and to understand which programs benefit students, and where adjustments might be needed to better serve students and families.
Promise Partners are authorized to use information ONLY to promote students’ educational success.
What information is shared?
Who is data shared with and how is it used?
We share aggregate information with community organizations, healthcare providers, government agencies, school districts, philanthropic groups, and businesses that work in the students’ community Promise Partners and who have committed to the principles of Collective Impact, signed data confidentiality agreements, and received specific training on data privacy and use. Some of these Promise Partners provide programs before and after school and over the summer to reinforce what’s being taught in school. Others provide tutoring and mentoring, both during and outside of the school day. Others support parents, guardians and families with skills classes, employment services, financial planning, housing, information about early learning opportunities in their communities, and other resources.
All Promise Partners have committed to protect information and work collaboratively with each other to help every student excel in their education.
Access to individual-level information is granted only to a small subset of Promise Partners who meet our privacy policy criteria above.Where is student information shared?
There are three main ways:
1. UWSL, as a coordinator and supporter of Promise Partners, uses a cloud-based data management system (UWSL Partner Database) that offers state-of-the-art Certain Promise Partners who provide direct services in schools to students and who have reviewed and signed data confidentiality agreements, received data security training, work in the student’s community, and have an appropriate “need to know” role share individual-level information through this secure system.
2. Partners may also share this information through carefully facilitated, closed-door meetings designed to create plans for individual students, and to understand which programs directly benefit students and which ones need to be.
3. Partners may also store and access aggregate data on their key performance measures using UWSL’s Partner Databases.
Protecting data from breaches and unauthorized use:
We only collect student data when parents or guardians give written consent, the information is used to support student academic success, and the information is kept secure. Here are just some of the policies and practices we have in place to protect this information. For more information, please visit the “Additional Resources” section above.
Administrative and Technical Security Mechanisms
Practices related to the transmission of data and who has access to information
Single point of access: Electronic information is only shared among trained service providers through the Promise Partner site, our secure online data management system. One of our contracted conditions of use is that no individual-level information may be downloaded from the Promise Partner site onto any external hard drive, cloud solution, or other media (i.e. USB drive, CD, DVD).
Limited user access: Promise Partnership Utah staff limit access to information, only giving users access to the minimum level of information necessary for them to support students.
Patch management: Promise Partnership Utah and the Promise Partner site staff ensure all systems are current with system updates, patches, and security hotfixes.
Anti-virus management: Promise Partnership Utah and the Promise Partner site staff run anti-virus software. The system is updated daily for new virus definitions and is scanned regularly.
Account/password management: Promise Partnership Utah staff keep active user accounts up to date and delete or disable accounts that are no longer in use. Promise Partner site staff require end users to use a highly sensitive password protection and management tool. One of our contracted conditions of use is that end users must lock their computer or sign out of the system when they leave. Promise Partnership Utah staff has configured the Promise Partner site so that an inactive user is logged out after 1 hour.
Audit trails and logging: All activity is logged and auditable to maintain records of data access and use. Promise Partnership Utah staff maintain an auditable log of individual-level information received and when.
Security audits: Promise Partnership Utah contracts with a security firm to conduct security audits and perform penetration testing of all data transfer system components. The Promise Partner site provides Promise Partnership Utah upon request information as to when they complete security audits.
Encryption: Promise Partnership Utah staff accept individual-level information only through a secure file transfer system that encrypts data prior to transmitting it. The Promise Partner site software solution includes multiple technical safeguards designed to ensure all information is maintained and transmitted securely. The system uses 128-bit encryption during transit, data hashing, and 256-bit encryption for data at rest.
Technical Security Mechanisms to Guard Against Breaches and Unauthorized Use
Regulation and Practices
Practices related to understanding and abiding by application privacy laws
FERPA and written consent: The collection, use, and sharing of information must comply with federal and state laws. These include the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal law designed to protect the confidential information of individuals related to education, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), a federal law designed to protect the confidential information of individuals related to their medical care and history. No individual-level information may be shared among trained service providers who work directly with students in Promise Partnership Community Schools, verbally or electronically, without appropriate written consent from a parent or guardian.
Training and agreements for users and staff: Data entry into the Promise Partner site may only be done by trained and certified users who work for Promise Partners and have signed data privacy agreements and end user agreements. Each Promise Partner site employee and each Promise Partnership Utah employee with access to individual-level information is required to sign and comply with Data Privacy/Sharing Policies and to participate in regular privacy trainings as a condition for employment.
Discretion when discussing individuals: Information about students may be discussed only in discreet locations where other students cannot hear.
Destruction of records: Paper records containing individual-level information are destroyed as soon as they are no longer needed. (We do maintain, as allowed by law, digital records necessary for historical analyses.)
Any suspected violation of these security practices is brought to Utah’s Promise Board of Directors.
What is a Data Consent Form?
When and how is physical and electronic information destroyed?
If a student’s parent or guardian (or the student, if he or she is over the age of 18) revokes in writing their consent to share information, Promise Partnership Utah will alter relevant data fields in the Promise Partner site so that the student’s identity is hidden. Please Note: physical student information often exists in many places and that Promise Partnership Utah can only remove information from the Promise Partner site. To remove a student’s information from other locations (such as a school record), a parent, guardian, or adult student must contact the organization that holds the information.
Promise Partners also shred (or place in a secure shred bin) physical student information that is no longer needed.
Who should I contact if I have questions?
We review questions and input regularly and thoughtfully. Please email the Data and Results team at Promise Partnership Utah at results@promisepartnership.org.