Overview for Schools & Districts

Polaris transforms student conversations into instant, actionable insights. It's data that drives real change instead of sitting in spreadsheets. This page is the full introduction we share with schools and districts considering Polaris, built by Human Restoration Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

The problem: data that can't answer "why?"

Schools have more data than ever, and it still can't answer why. Surveys are good at telling you what's happening. The natural next question is why, and a rating can't answer it.

Picture four years of climate survey data: engagement holding steady at 3.2 out of 5, safety at 4.1, workload complaints ticking up. 247 responses. Now what?

Quantitative data is genuinely valuable. But without an explanation of why the numbers look the way they do, we fill the gap with our own assumptions and read the data to confirm what we already believed (Coburn & Turner, 2011). A survey at the end of the year is not working. A student council made up of the same six kids is not working. Polaris starts here.

The idea: conversations tell you what to do

Numbers give you a starting point. Conversations tell you what to do next.

"Nobody really asks us what we think. The teachers decide everything and we just follow instructions." 8th grader, on student voice

"When we got to pick our own topics, it was way better. I actually wanted to come to class." 7th grader, on motivation

"You get four things due Thursday and you just kind of shut down. It's easier to take the zero." 9th grader, on pacing and workload

Polaris makes it possible to listen and learn from conversations at scale. An organization can hold hundreds of empathy interviews in a single week, and read what came back while it still matters. Every quote stays linked to the audio it came from.

It starts with an empathy interview, not a questionnaire

Brainstorm questions with your school community, then have young people and their peers discuss them on the Polaris recording platform. Adults can run the same session with staff, families, or the wider community.

1. Brainstorm what questions you want answered.
2. Students or adults talk in small groups.
3. Polaris does the rest.

A few of the questions schools ask:

• "Tell me about a time you felt like you really belonged at our school. What was happening around you?"
• "What is one action, no matter how small or large, our school should take to make school feel better for everyone?"
• "What is one word you'd use to describe our school? Why did you pick it?"
• "What motivates you to learn? What makes you actually want to try?"

A listening report, back in 2 to 3 business days

Every session comes back as a curated listening report:

• Report overview and key student voices
• Themes identified across every conversation
• Strengths and challenges, with quotes tied to audio
• Per-question deep dive
• Recommended changes, sorted by effort
• Image and scale questions, visualized

See Accessing Reports for what a report looks like inside the platform.

How it works

Three phases, and a question set for whatever you need to know.

1. Create a session. Start from a curated question set, build with AI assistance, or write your own. We co-design with your team.
2. Students and adults respond. Group interviews, one-on-one conversations, or writing, in participants' native languages. Teachers watch from a live portal.
3. Polaris reveals what matters. Identifying details removed, themes surfaced across every conversation, research attached, audio kept behind every quote.

Question sets a school can run today: climate & culture, belonging & relationships, portrait of a graduate, restorative practices, equity & access, learning & engagement, wellbeing, or any question your team needs answered.

Sessions run 20 to 60 minutes, with up to 20,000 participants recording at one time. Full school or district analysis, students and adults alike.

Under the hood

Every recording passes through a multi-step pipeline, from raw audio to a report you can question: transcription, translation, red flag monitoring, PII removal, content analysis, theme identification, and research connection. Our team reviews before anything is published.

• PII removal. Names, locations, and personal identifiers are redacted automatically before any analysis runs.
• Red flag monitoring. Harmful or urgent content is identified and escalated to a trusted adult in real time.
• Research connection. Findings are mapped to published education research, so every recommendation is grounded in scholarship.

Ask hundreds of conversations a question

Get an answer with the receipts. Ask something like "What did students say about engagement?" and Polaris searches every conversation, reads the relevant transcripts, and answers with the themes it found. Every claim opens to a student voice you can play back, anonymized and translated where needed.

See Searching Across Data for how it works day to day.

The spring 2026 pilot

• 8,000+ students heard
• 11 districts
• 42,000+ quotes and key data points

Warren Local Schools (Vincent, OH). A small student leadership team held focus groups with nearly every student in the district, plus staff. The work led to changes to the master schedule, a new Flex Friday period, and students leading professional development several times through the year, presenting and learning from this data themselves.

Ottawa Area ISD (West Michigan). Multiple districts partnered to learn about 504 and IEP needs, asking students direct questions about full inclusion and examining district policy on grading, homework, and pedagogy, with a heavy emphasis on universal design for learning. Students partnered directly in the work and presented to multiple school boards and superintendents.

Privacy, compliance, and data agreements

Polaris handles student data, so this section comes with receipts.

• Compliant by design. Polaris is FERPA, COPPA, and CIPA certified.
• Part of the Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community. We're a member of A4L's Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC), and we execute data privacy agreements with participating districts, including the SDPC's National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA). Signed student data privacy agreements (SDPAs) are available on request.
• Anonymized automatically. Names, places, and identifying details are removed before analysis. Voices can be anonymized before playback.
• Never used for training. Student responses are never used to train AI models, and never touch an open-internet chatbot.
• Never for sale. Our nonprofit charter permanently prohibits selling or transferring student data. It survives dissolution, merger, or acquisition.
• Automation drafts, humans publish. Six human review checkpoints, from question authorship through final report sign-off.
• Low footprint. Compute runs on servers matched with renewable energy, and scales to zero between jobs.

Common Sense Privacy ranks Polaris at a 95% privacy rating; read the full evaluation. For the paperwork side, see Data Privacy Agreements and polariseducation.ai/ai-ethics.

Pricing

$1.50 per student, per year, with a $2,000 annual minimum that covers report servicing for smaller schools. That includes four listening reports a year, every educator and family (no per-seat fees), and unlimited searching and data exports.

We're a nonprofit. There are no investors and no shareholders. Licensing revenue covers infrastructure, and the rest goes back into the platform. Optional services (facilitator training, student sense-making, staff onboarding) are $1,500 per 2.5-hour session, virtual or in person; self-serve guides are free.

The numbers are published up front at polariseducation.ai/pricing; see also our pricing page for payment details.

Next steps

Find your North Star. The easiest first step is a short conversation about your school and what you're trying to listen for.

• Sign up or reach out through the contact form
• Coming next: community dashboards, design challenges, and career-technical education integration