Zero-data retention · FERPA, COPPA & state DOE aligned

The 5E lesson planner that forgets you the moment you leave.

Pick your standard. Get a complete Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate plan in under two minutes. Export it. Close the tab. Everything is gone. Nothing stored. Nothing sold. Nothing to breach.

Free for individual teachers. No student data required. Ever. No card to start.

Built for K-12 teachers in districts where “just paste it into ChatGPT” is a firing offense. If your admin has warned staff about unapproved AI tools, or your state has its own student-data statute on top of FERPA, this was made for you.

The part nobody tells you

“FERPA compliant” still means they keep your data.

Every major AI teaching tool stores your prompts and your plans on its servers. Compliant means they promise to guard the filing cabinet. It does not mean the cabinet is empty. Ours is empty. There is no cabinet.

What “compliant” tools actually do

  • Store every prompt you type, tied to your account
  • Keep your generated plans on their servers indefinitely
  • Reserve the right to review content for “safety” or “quality”
  • Hold data that can be breached, subpoenaed, or leaked in a vendor acquisition
  • Require your district to sign a DPA that protects the vendor first

What PlanZero does

  • Your lesson exists only in your browser session
  • When you close the tab, the session and everything in it is destroyed
  • No prompt logs. No plan archive. Nothing to review because nothing remains
  • Nothing to breach, subpoena, or leak. You cannot lose what was never kept
  • Your account holds an email and a password hash. That is the entire database

Other tools ask your district to trust their security. We removed the thing that needed securing.

How it works

Sunday night, handled in three steps.

No 80-tool dashboard to learn. No prompt engineering. One job, done properly.

1

Pick your standard

Choose your state, grade, and subject. Search the exact standard code your district pacing guide demands: Common Core, NGSS, TEKS, and state frameworks.

2

Get the full 5E arc

A complete Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate sequence with timing, questioning stems, materials, and a built-in formative check for each phase.

3

Export, then vanish

Send it to PDF or Google Docs. The moment you close the tab, the plan, the prompts, and the session are destroyed. Monday morning, it exists only where you put it.

Why 5E

The framework your evaluator already scores.

Generic AI gives you a worksheet with an objective stapled to the top. PlanZero builds the inquiry arc your observation rubric is looking for, phase by phase.

E1

Engage

A hook tied to the standard, designed to surface prior knowledge and misconceptions in the first five minutes.

E2

Explore

Hands-on investigation before vocabulary. Students build the concept before you name it.

E3

Explain

Student-led meaning making first, then your direct instruction with the formal terms and notation.

E4

Elaborate

Application in a new context, with extension paths for early finishers and scaffolds for students who need them.

E5

Evaluate

A formative check aligned to the standard’s exact verb and rigor level, plus an exit ticket you can grade in minutes.

An honest comparison

The tools you already know, side by side.

MagicSchool, Diffit, and Eduaide are good tools. Teachers we respect use them. Here is exactly where we are different, and where we deliberately do less.

PlanZeroMagicSchoolDiffitEduaide
Full 5E lesson arcBuilt in, every planOn requestNoOn request
Data retentionZero. Session onlyStored on vendor serversStored on vendor serversStored on vendor servers
State standards searchYesYesYesYes
Student data requiredNone, everOptionalOptionalOptional
Number of tools to learnOne80+One75+
Admin dashboards & rosteringImpossible by designYesYesYes

Competitor features based on their published materials, 2026. We list what they do well because pretending otherwise would insult you.

Straight answer

Who this is for. And who it is not.

We would rather lose the wrong customer than waste a Sunday night of the right one.

This is for you if

  • You want one great plan, not an 80-tool dashboard you will never finish exploring
  • Your district has banned or frozen unapproved AI tools and you refuse to risk your license over a lesson plan
  • You will not type a student’s name, IEP detail, or class roster into a chatbot, no matter what the privacy policy promises
  • Your evaluator scores to the 5E or inquiry arc and generic AI output keeps coming back flat
  • You plan on Sunday night and want it done in minutes, not managed in a new system

This is not for you if

  • Your district wants admin dashboards, usage analytics, or rostering. We cannot offer them. There is no data to dashboard
  • You want a permanent cloud archive of every plan you have ever made. Export to Drive instead
  • You want AI to do the thinking. We draft the arc and the paperwork. The judgment about your classroom stays with you
  • You need live, student-facing slides and polls. That is Curipod’s job and they do it well

Questions teachers actually ask

The honest FAQ.

If you keep nothing, how do I have an account?

Your account record is an email address and a hashed password. That is the whole database. Lesson plans, prompts, standards searches, and exports live only in your browser session and are destroyed when it ends.

What happens if I close the tab before exporting?

The plan is gone. That is the product working as designed. Export to PDF or Google Docs first. Most teachers finish a plan in under two minutes, so treat the session like a whiteboard, not a filing cabinet.

Do you train your models on my lessons?

There is nothing to train on. Training requires retained data and we retain none. Your Sunday night planning does not become someone else’s product improvement.

Does this satisfy my state’s student-data law?

Zero-data retention is the strongest posture available under FERPA, COPPA, and state statutes like SOPIPA and NY Ed Law 2-d, because most of those laws regulate what vendors store and share. We store and share nothing. That said, final approval belongs to your district, so we publish a one-page architecture brief your technology office can review in five minutes.

Why only the 5E model?

Because a tool that does one thing properly beats a dashboard that does 80 things adequately. 5E is the most widely evaluated inquiry framework in US classrooms, and building every plan on it means the output matches what your observer expects to see. If you need a different framework on a given day, you can still adjust the exported document.

What does it cost?

Free for individual teachers, with generous weekly planning limits. A paid tier lifts the limits. We will never charge you for “privacy features.” Privacy is the architecture, not an upsell.

Two minutes, start to exported plan

Walk in Monday with a plan admin approves.
Leave no evidence it was ever anywhere else.

Free for individual teachers. No student data. No card. No archive. No trail.

Plan my first lesson free