---
title: "Safety Rules"
url: https://docs.growamal.com/en/how-it-works/safety/
language: en
---

# Safety Rules

Honesty is the product's core promise. A measurement-led system that escalates on
thin evidence, or punishes a child for a plan that was never delivered, loses the
teacher's trust. Amal wraps the entire loop in a layer of safety rules that no
single decision can bypass.

## The five GSR global safety rules

Every progress-monitoring decision (in CBM, RTI, the bundle catalog, and the
dashboard) inherits these five rules:

| Rule | Guarantee |
|---|---|
| **GSR-01** | **Insufficient evidence / Tie Rule.** When evidence is split or too thin, halt and emit `do_not_decide_yet` rather than guess. |
| **GSR-02** | **Acute regression.** A drop of **≥20% across two comparable sessions** triggers an **Immediate Review**, never an automatic fail. |
| **GSR-03** | **Benchmarks only at review windows.** Benchmark comparisons are made at defined review points, not on every probe. |
| **GSR-04** | **Comparable-data guardrail.** Only sessions measured on the same yardstick are compared. |
| **GSR-05** | **No single-point decision.** No status changes on one data point alone. |

> **Warning:** **GSR-02 never auto-fails a student.** A sharp drop raises a flag for a teacher to
> look at. It is a signal to investigate, not a verdict. The point is to bring a human
> in, not to push a child down a tier automatically.

## The fidelity gate

Before a plan can be judged "not working," Amal asks whether it was actually
**delivered**. The fidelity gate distinguishes two very different verdicts:

| Fidelity | Verdict |
|---|---|
| **≥ 80%** | The plan was delivered. If the student isn't responding, the plan itself needs adjusting. |
| **< 80%** | The plan **wasn't delivered**, which is a different problem entirely. You can't conclude the support failed. |

> **Note:** The fidelity gate **blocks false escalation**. Without it, a plan that was never
> really taught would look like a plan that failed, and the child might be moved to a
> more intensive tier for no reason. Low fidelity points at delivery, not at the
> student.

## Teacher decides; growth language only (V-12)

The teacher decides at every step (V-12). The system proposes and explains the why;
the teacher approves, changes, or overrides. Three mechanisms keep this safe:

- **Override-code dropdowns, no free text.** Every override is recorded against a
  closed catalog of reason codes. There is never a free-text box about a student.
- **Context flags from a closed dictionary.** Teachers add context only through a
  controlled set of flag IDs, never typed notes about a child.
- **Growth language only.** No framework or clinical labels appear in any
  user-facing copy. Status is described in growth terms, stricter still for
  parents.

## The structural backstops

Three platform-level guarantees sit under everything:

- **Tenant isolation.** Every tenant-scoped row carries an `organizationId`; queries
  filter by it automatically, and cross-organization access is reported as `404`.
- **Append-only audit.** Measurement-relevant tables are never edited or deleted in
  place; corrections are new rows, so the record stays replayable (V-6).
- **The System QA Checks registry.** A cross-cutting registry of safety checks runs
  as the backstop (data sufficiency, acute-regression review, bulk-activation
  safety, scaffold-tier scoping, sensitive-language blocks, and more), so a rule
  that one module forgot is still caught centrally.

## Where to go next

- [Progress Monitoring guide](https://docs.growamal.com/en/guides/progress-monitoring/): the GSR rules in operation.
- [RTI Decisions guide](https://docs.growamal.com/en/guides/rti-decisions/): tier movement and the fidelity gate.
- [Language Safety guide](https://docs.growamal.com/en/guides/language-safety/): the substring filter, parent-stricter tier, and context-flag dictionary.
- [System QA Checks guide](https://docs.growamal.com/en/guides/qa-checks/): the cross-cutting registry that backstops these rules.
- [Standards & Benchmarks guide](https://docs.growamal.com/en/guides/standards-and-benchmarks/): where the benchmark comparisons in GSR-03 come from.
- [Glossary](https://docs.growamal.com/en/glossary/): GSR, fidelity, acute regression, context flag, override-code catalog defined.