Alongside
by Alongside
This app has not yet been evaluated against our instructional invariants. The analysis below is based on independent research.
The Bottom Line
Partially. Alongside offers structured scaffolding for social-emotional learning through journaling and AI-driven coaching, but its core function is behavioral tracking rather than direct academic instruction. While it utilizes personalized feedback to build self-regulation skills, effectiveness relies entirely on consistent student engagement and school oversight.
Pros
- Provides immediate, personalized feedback through an AI chatbot to guide student self-reflection and emotional regulation.
- Uses self-monitoring tools like daily habit tracking to build metacognitive awareness over time.
- Delivers multilingual support to reduce cognitive load for non-native English speakers during complex social-emotional exercises.
Cons
- Lacks spaced retrieval practice or objective mastery checks to ensure students actually internalize the taught coping strategies.
- Relies heavily on intrinsic student motivation to initiate journaling, limiting active engagement for reluctant or struggling users.
- Does not provide clear pedagogical pathways for targeted academic skill acquisition outside of general wellness maintenance.
Does Alongside Actually Teach?
Alongside is effective for helping your child build self-regulation and emotional awareness, though it functions as a behavioral support tool rather than a traditional academic program. Your child will use this platform to log daily habits, write journal entries, and interact with an AI chatbot designed to mimic clinical coaching. The app aims to build metacognition, which is your child's ability to monitor and understand their own emotional and behavioral states. Because the system relies on self-reported data and voluntary chatbot engagement, its efficacy depends entirely on how consistently your child interacts with it. There are no built-in quizzes or spaced repetition mechanics to test their understanding of the wellness concepts presented in the platform's video resources. Instead, learning happens through problem-based reflection. If your child struggles with school attendance or emotional regulation, the immediate feedback from the AI coach provides a low-stakes environment to practice coping strategies. However, educators and parents must actively monitor these digital check-ins, as the app itself does not enforce knowledge retention or behavioral change without external accountability.
How Does Alongside Help Students Learn?
Alongside uses a problem-based, personalized coaching model where students engage with an AI chatbot and reflective tools to build social-emotional skills. Upon logging in, students access a dashboard to track daily habits like sleep, mood, and attendance. The core instructional mechanism is the AI chatbot, which acts as a scaffolded conversational agent. When a student reports stress or a behavioral challenge, the chatbot asks guiding questions to help them identify triggers and formulate actionable coping strategies. Alongside this interactive component, the app provides a library of instructional videos covering various wellness topics. Students consume direct instruction through these videos and then apply the concepts via digital journaling. For schools, the platform collects this self-reported data to generate school-climate assessments and flag students who may need multi-tiered system of supports interventions. The platform does not use traditional grading; instead, progression is tracked through the frequency of habit logging and the depth of reflective journaling.
Where Does Alongside Excel and Fall Short?
Alongside's biggest strength is its use of immediate, personalized feedback via the AI chatbot, while its biggest weakness is the absence of structured retrieval practice to ensure students internalize the wellness strategies they are taught. From a learning science perspective, immediate feedback is highly effective for correcting misconceptions and guiding emotional self-regulation in the moment. When a student expresses frustration, the AI coach intervenes instantly, utilizing problem-based learning to guide the student toward a solution. The platform also successfully encourages metacognition by requiring users to explicitly track and evaluate their own habits over time. However, the instructional design lacks rigorous reinforcement mechanics. Spaced repetition and retrieval practice are largely absent; once a student watches a wellness video or completes a journal entry, the system does not actively prompt them to recall that specific coping mechanism at a later date. This means that while the app excels at providing point-of-need emotional scaffolding, it struggles to guarantee long-term retention of social-emotional concepts. The heavy reliance on intrinsic motivation also means unengaged students may simply click through the habit trackers without experiencing meaningful cognitive processing.
Is Alongside Right for Your Child?
Alongside is best for middle and high school students who need structured behavioral support and self-regulation tools to complement established school wellness programs. Designed for 4th through 12th graders, the platform serves as an effective digital journal and habit tracker for students working on social-emotional goals. It functions primarily as an intervention tool within a school's support system. It is less suited for younger students who require explicit, teacher-led direct instruction to grasp foundational behavioral concepts.
Frequently Asked Questions About Alongside
Is Alongside free?
No, Alongside is not free. It is a business-to-school platform sold directly to educational institutions, with yearly student licenses starting at $15 per student. Volume discounts are available for larger district-wide implementations. Parents cannot typically purchase individual consumer licenses for home use.
Is Alongside good for middle schoolers?
Yes, Alongside is developmentally appropriate and effective for middle schoolers. The platform targets grades 4 through 12. Middle school students benefit significantly from the app's metacognitive habit tracking and low-stakes AI chatbot, which provides a private, scaffolded space to practice emotional regulation during early adolescence.
What does Alongside teach?
Alongside teaches self-regulation, metacognition, and social-emotional learning skills. It guides students through identifying emotions, understanding behavioral triggers, and developing healthy daily habits like consistent sleep and attendance. It does not teach traditional academic subjects, focusing instead on the cognitive frameworks needed to maintain overall student well-being.
Is Alongside safe for kids?
Yes, Alongside implements privacy protocols suitable for school environments, but parental oversight regarding data sharing is recommended. Because the app collects sensitive emotional and behavioral data through journaling and chatbot interactions, schools must manage consent carefully. The AI is restricted to clinical parameters, preventing it from generating inappropriate or harmful responses.
Has The Learning Standard evaluated Alongside?
No, The Learning Standard has not yet evaluated Alongside. This app is currently pending formal review. Once evaluated, we will update this page with a comprehensive rating based on our [methodology](/methodology), which analyzes the app's adherence to established learning science principles like spaced repetition, feedback quality, and cognitive load.
How does Alongside compare to traditional social-emotional curricula?
Alongside replaces passive instruction with active self-monitoring. Traditional curricula often rely on direct instruction via worksheets or group discussion. Alongside uses a personalized, problem-based approach where an AI chatbot delivers point-of-need interventions, though it lacks the structured recall and quizzing exercises often found in traditional academic curricula.
Data Transparency
23 of 35 checks passed
Evaluated April 2026
View privacy policy →View all 35 checks
Parent Access7/8
Does the policy mention parents specifically?
“Where the user is an adult parent/legal guardian, the parent/legal guardian must first create a parent account”
Can parents view their child's data?
“Schools and parents/legal guardians have the right to access any information about their students/child.”
Can parents modify their child's data?
“The policy states parents can "access, review, or delete" their child's data, but does not explicitly mention modifying it.”
Can parents delete their child's account?
“You (or a parent/legal guardian) may request deletion of your data or your entire account at any time by contacting us”
Is there a dedicated Children's Privacy section?
“CHILD ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION ACT COMPLIANCE ("COPPA") Protecting the privacy of young children is especially important to us.”
Does it reference COPPA compliance?
“We also comply with the Children Online Protection Privacy Act (“COPPA”)”
Does it reference FERPA compliance?
“and the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”),”
Is parental consent required for child accounts?
“we only collect personal information... from a Child User where their parent/legal guardian has provided us with verifiable parental consent”
Data Portability1/5
Can users access their personal data?
“If you wish to access, review, modify or delete any of the personal information that you have provided to us”
Can users download/export their data?
“The policy does not mention any ability for users to download or export their data.”
Is there a self-service data access tool?
“Users must request data access by contacting privacy@alongside.care, rather than using a self-service tool.”
Is a specific data format mentioned for export?
“The policy does not mention any specific data export format.”
Is there an API for data access?
“There is no mention of an API for data access in the policy.”
Data Minimization1/6
Is data collection itemized?
“First Name and Last Name Cell Phone Number, Carrier and Device Information Email address Birth Date Preferred Pronouns...”
Can the app be used without a real name?
“The policy lists "First Name and Last Name" under collected information without mentioning an option to use a pseudonym.”
Can the app be used without an email?
“The policy lists "Email address" as collected information and does not state it is optional.”
Does it state collection is limited to what is necessary?
“The policy does not explicitly state that data collection is limited to only what is necessary.”
Is IP address anonymized or truncated?
“The policy collects "Your IP address" and does not mention anonymizing or truncating it.”
Is location tracking explicitly excluded?
“The policy explicitly mentions collecting "geolocation (course only)".”
Third-Party Protection6/7
Does it explicitly state no selling of data?
“We do not sell personal information, including Child Personal Information, to third parties.”
Are third-party providers named?
“SCHEDULE OF OUR THIRD PARTY SERVICE PROVIDERS Name of Service Provider... Amazon Web Services... Anthropic... Clever...”
Are providers contractually restricted?
“These providers have access to personal information... and are contractually bound to use it only for specified purposes.”
No-targeted-advertising commitment?
“We do use third party marketing tools and social media cookies/pixels to market our services to schools and to adults.”
Is AI/ML data sharing addressed?
“Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Providers. AI services that power chatbot functionality... receive anonymized user messages.”
Child-specific sharing restriction?
“We do not share Child Personal Information with third parties for their own marketing purposes.”
Cookies/tracking limited or opt-out?
“If you would like to delete cookies or instruct your web browser to delete or refuse cookies, please visit the help pages of your web browser.”
Deletion & Retention5/5
Can users delete their account?
“You may delete your account within the Services at any time.”
Self-service deletion mechanism?
“You may delete your account within the Services at any time.”
Specific data retention timeline?
“we will delete or deidentify all data, including all personal data, within 60 days of the date in which the account became inactive”
Auto-deletion of inactive accounts?
“If the account is inactive, we will delete or deidentify all data... within 60 days of the date in which the account became inactive”
Post-deletion handling described?
“When we will delete your account, we delete all data... using reasonable measures to protect against unauthorized access... Alternatively, we may choose to deidentify your data”
Advertising3/4
Advertising model explicitly disclosed?
“We do not use cookies to serve third-party advertisements... We do use cookies to serve advertisements to schools and parents”
Free from third-party advertisements?
“We do not use cookies to serve third-party advertisements”
Children excluded from ad targeting?
“We do not use cookies to serve third-party advertisements, nor to target children with behavioral advertising.”
Ad-free option available?
“The policy does not mention an ad-free tier or option.”
What This Means
This app does not provide adequate data transparency for parents. This may mean you cannot easily access your child's data, understand what information is collected, or request deletion of personal information. We recommend considering alternatives that provide better data transparency, or using our template letters to request your data rights be honored.
About this evaluation: Based on automated analysis of Alongside's privacy policy using the Common Sense Privacy Program framework. Evaluation covers 35 binary checks across 6 dimensions. Privacy policies can change — this evaluation reflects the most recent version we analyzed.
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For Alongside
If you represent Alongside and believe this evaluation is inaccurate or outdated, we welcome the opportunity to re-evaluate your product.
Request Re-evaluationDetails
- Pricing
- Yearly student licenses start at $15 per student per year, with volume discounts available.
- Platforms
- Web Browser, iOS (Apple mobile), iPadOS (Apple tablet), Android (Google mobile), Tizen (Samsung mobile), Windows (Microsoft), macOS (Apple), Chrome OS (Google)
- Grade Levels
- 4th Grade, 5th Grade, 6th Grade, 7th Grade, 8th Grade, 9th Grade, 10th Grade, 11th Grade, 12th Grade
- Website
- Visit site