Microsoft’s move in the AI school debate: controls over how student data gets used |
Microsoft’s move in the AI school debate: controls over how student data gets used
A week after New York City announced a one-year moratorium on AI in public schools, Microsoft announced it’ll be giving every school district in the country the option to dictate its own AI privacy and safety rules within its contracts—and the unions behind the deal say they want OpenAI and Anthropic to sign on next.
On Wednesday, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith announced the plan alongside American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, mere miles from where New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul first announced the AI moratorium for the nation’s largest school system.
The “National AI Safety & Privacy Standard” will be legally enforceable once written into a district’s Microsoft agreement. It does not ban AI use in classrooms: it gives each school district enforceable controls over how AI products handle student data.
The agreement lets school districts write the protections directly into their Microsoft contracts. Under the standard, companies cannot use student data to train AI models, cannot track students, and cannot let AI make decisions without a human reviewing them. Districts that sign on can also cancel contracts and seek damages if a company breaks the rules. These were some of the major reasons why more than 250........