THE PREP PERIOD

Quick tips, tools & tricks you can take to the classroom on Monday

Claude for Teachers Security Check List | This week's tip comes from Aldeya​

Anthropic just introduced Claude for Teachers. Verified teachers get Pro-level access, the $20-a-month plan, free until June 2027. That means the higher usage limits and the strongest models rather than the capped free tier, plus a set of tools built for the job.

You get skills for lesson planning and differentiation, a live connection to academic standards in all fifty states so plans come out aligned to your curriculum, and the ability to turn a rough idea into a finished handout, worksheet, or slide deck. Cowork lets you hand off recurring tasks like reviewing exit tickets and have Claude run them on a schedule. There are also nine edtech connectors in the mix, including MagicSchool, Diffit, Canva Education, and TeachFX, so it can work with tools you may already use.

Well first, free is only free until June 2027. So, while you won't be cut off mid-school year, it's likely that come June 2027 you will have to decide to pay monthly or yearly or lose the tools you've come to rely on.

Secondly, and most importantly, whenever something is free, it usually means that you (read: your data) is the product. While Anthropic promises not to train their models on your data, if you verify as a K-12 teacher, it's important to look at their security language carefully.

So, as you may know, a company cannot itself be FERPA compliant. FERPA is a federal law that governs schools and districts, the institutions that actually hold student records, not the vendors they buy from.

What a vendor can do is write its terms so that your district is able to use the tool in a compliant way. Whether your use is compliant depends on your district's data agreements and on how you handle student information day to day. The alignment language means Anthropic has done its side. Compliance still rests with your district and with you.

So before you jump in...

• Find the right document. The student-data protections for teacher accounts are available at anthropic.com/legal/k12-dpa.
• Notice who the agreement covers. Claude for Teachers is built for individual educators, not districts. Your account is covered, but there's no signed agreement between Anthropic and your district. A dedicated district offering is on the way... but my guess is Anthropic is betting on teachers falling in love with the product and then pushing their districts to invest in the enterprise offering when it arrives.
• Check your approved-tools list. Most districts keep a list of vetted edtech, and many require a signed data privacy agreement with the district itself before any tool touches student information. Search your district's list, or ask your data privacy officer or instructional tech lead whether Claude is cleared.
• Let your district make the compliance call. Aligned terms are not the same as an approval. The determination that your specific use meets FERPA belongs to your district, so confirm with whoever handles data privacy before you sign up.
• Keep identifiable student data out until you have that yes! Many of the coolest Claude for Teachers offerings assume you will feed it student information. Differentiating for specific kids, analyzing assessment data, drafting feedback or progress notes, all of it runs on names, grades, IEP details, and behavior records. Hold every bit of that until your district has said yes in a way you can point to. Make this behavior your default with any vendor, no matter how confident the terms sound, unless you have heard directly from your district that you are cleared.

SARAH'S PICK

Chalkbeat​

​Anthropic unveils Claude for Teachers, joining OpenAI and Google in race to dominate classroom AI​

Today's Prep Period was less "quick" this week so we'll keep Sarah's Pick snappy.

Our friend from AFT, Randi Weingarten, is back this week with more to say on AI. In the wake of the release of Claude for Teachers, she had some positive things to say about it. "It’s important that Anthropic is committing to these principles in their new Claude for Teachers — a tool designed by and for educators to assist them instructionally and hopefully give them more time for the human relationships at the heart of learning,” she wrote in the company’s press release. You may remember from last week's issue that she called for a complete ban on student-facing AI in elementary grades shortly after doing a site visit at one of Khanmigo's pilot schools. It seems everyone has mixed feelings when it comes to taking a stance on AI in the classrooms.

Regardless, I thought this article was a good primer for Claude for Teachers and a solid overview of the current environment. Worth the quick read this week!

LOUNGE READS

The AI headlines that matter for your classroom

This week the big news is definitely that Anthropic made Claude free for U.S. K-12 teachers. States from Illinois to Idaho are rolling out AI guidance. A wave of research and commentary is pushing back on the idea that AI tutors can replace what teachers actually do.

NBC Chicago

​Illinois bans AI use in teacher evaluations under new law​

Illinois just made it illegal to use AI when evaluating teachers, a first worth watching.

"Under provisions of Senate Bill 2909, evaluators will be prohibited from using AI to assign a “numerical score or other qualitative rating for any component of a teacher’s evaluation,” according to the text of the bill. Further, teachers will be prohibited from using AI to generate their portion of the evaluations."

The Conversation

​Despite the growth of some AI schools like Alpha, research doesn't show that AI tutors are better than human teachers​

The evidence that AI tutors outperform human teachers still does not exist, researchers say.

"Instead of trying to replace teachers with AI, I think that a more promising strategy is to support teachers in using AI to become better educators."

Chalkbeat​

​Anthropic unveils Claude for Teachers, joining OpenAI and Google in race to dominate classroom AI​

Anthropic launches a version of its AI-powered assistant Claude for teachers, entering a race by technology companies to infuse AI into education.

"Drew Bent, education lead for Anthropic, said that teachers using Claude’s educator product could, for example, pull in a student’s past assessment data and assignment data, along with past lesson plans, and ask Claude to build lesson plans for individual students based on that data — all while they’re sleeping."

A NOTE BEFORE YOU GO...

I'm glad you're here! If something resonated this week, hit reply and tell me. If you know a fellow educator who would find this useful, forward it their way. The village grows when educators share with other educators.

Never hesitate to send me an email if you're looking for some human-forward, AI thought partnership!