THE PREP PERIOD

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

The Data Privacy Agreement Check | This week's tip comes from Mark Schneider and Andrew Rice at AEI​

It's 9pm. You're forty minutes into a stack of paragraph responses, your tea has gone cold twice, and you paste a student's writing into an AI tool so the feedback drafts itself a little faster. At no point does it occur to you that you may have just brushed up against federal privacy law. Why would it? You were grading... and didn't Anthropic say this was ok?

Ok mayyyybe this isn't quite you, but this moment is exactly what Schneider and Rice are worried about (you may have caught the link in last week's Lounge Reads).

They took a close look at Claude for Teachers and found the marketing and the fine print tell two different stories. The marketing invites you to "hand Claude a folder of data" like class rosters, diagnostic results, attendance, and the notes you keep on kids. The fine print asks you to promise things that you legally cannot.

Under FERPA, the federal law governing student records, only your district can authorize a vendor to handle sensitive student information, because the vendor has to operate under the district's control.

A teacher signing up alone can't grant that. The terms also put the legal risk of what gets uploaded on the person doing the uploading. Your prep program taught you many things. Reading an indemnification clause was likely not one of them.

So an education-facing label tells you nothing about whether your district has an agreement in place. Either the tool is covered by a signed agreement with your district, or you are flying solo, on your own signature, with a student's data. The stakes climb even higher when an IEP or 504 plan is anywhere in the mix.

Before any AI tool touches student work, ask your tech coordinator or principal one question:

If the answer is no, you want to know that now, in August. (And if the answer is yes, get it in a form you can point to later. You know the drill.)

SARAH'S PICK

Stateline

​Schools Spend Billions on AI but Struggle to Figure Out What's Worth It​

"What data does our school have that this tool is actually improving learning, and who is tracking it?"

We have all sat through the back-to-school PD where a platform nobody asked for gets its big debut slide, along with a vague promise that it will help our students. Nobody explains how anyone knows that. The QR code for account setup goes up, and that's that. (Not to mention the fact that you have a to-do list the size of your arm and the AC in your room has not yet been turned on and omg was that a mouse...?)

The AI in education market brought in about $2.5 billion last year and is projected to pass $15 billion by 2033.

Meanwhile, Instructure found districts had access to an average of 3,001 digital tools while students and educators actually used about 4. Three thousand and one. Four.

The superintendents in the piece are refreshingly honest about it. Allentown's superintendent describes the entire vetting burden landing on individual districts, and a Tennessee superintendent says most products on the market don't move anything for students. Even the people who write procurement guidance for a living are blunt. As one Southern Regional Education Board director put it, "Anything with AI is a risky click."

You don't have to squint to see that this article and today's Prep Period article are essentially saying the same thing.

In fact, Mark Schneider, one of the authors of that AEI piece, shows up here too, telling Stateline that vendors will always know more about their products than districts do.

When the gap is about privacy, the legal risk rolls downhill to the teacher.

When the gap is about efficacy, the accountability for outcomes rolls downhill to the teacher.

The purchasing happens far from our classrooms, but the consequences show up there.

You can read my rant about including teachers on evaluation panels in Issue 16.

Based on this article, it sounds to me like district leaders are admitting they could use the help.

If the evidence behind a required tool is thin, you are allowed to ask for it, and asking is part of the job.

LOUNGE READS

The AI headlines that matter for your classroom

Schools are spending on AI tools, but researchers and reporters are finding that nobody has a good answer yet for what is working and what is not. Another take on the students who drafted their own national AI policy framework, and parents saying AI policies now factor into where they enroll their kids.

Stateline

​Schools Spend Billions on AI but Struggle to Figure Out What's Worth It​

Districts are buying AI tools at scale, but few have evidence any of it is helping students learn.

"A significant challenge is that the onus of making these decisions is placed entirely back on the individual school district."

Education Week

​Students Created a National AI Policy Framework. Here's What It Includes.​

Another take on the high schoolers who drafted a national AI framework, and their priorities that might surprise you.

"At a time when a lot of people are scared of [AI], and the kids sometimes know more about the technology than the adults do, and the adults have failed to reach any kind of consensus on this, it’s a profound statement that the kids were able to find some consensus.”

NBC News

​AI Reading Tool Amira Raises Privacy Concerns for New Mexico Parents and Schools​

Free article from The Santa Fe New Mexican: Santa Fe schools among districts aiming to opt out of AI literacy test​

A widely used AI reading tool is under scrutiny for how it collects and uses student data.

"The pushback comes as artificial intelligence has struck a nerve in New Mexico, where residents in recent months have fought developments such as the Project Jupiter data center and technology like Flock surveillance cameras."

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!