The agreement establishes legally enforceable protections.
Microsoft and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have reached a deal that establishes privacy and safety protections regarding the use of AI in schools, according to a report by Politico. This includes an agreement by Microsoft to not use data from teachers or students to train AI models, with exceptions being carved out for "narrow safety and security" scenarios.
The legally enforceable standards also ban Microsoft from tracking students and stops its AI products from making decisions in schools without human oversight. The deal also requires that the company be transparent with educators and parents regarding how its tools work. Those all seem like something companies shouldn't need legally enforceable agreements to abide by, but here we are.
When AI is used in schools, parents & educators deserve transparency, students deserve safety & everyone deserves strong privacy protections. That's what this agreement between @aft.org, @uft.org & @microsoft.com delivers w/enforceable safeguards that put students & families & educators first.
— Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸 (@rweingarten.bsky.social) 2026-09-09T17:02:49.750Z
AFT is the country's second-largest teachers union and is describing the deal as a "first of its kind" effort that seeks to fill in some gaps from the lack of any real federal guardrails for AI.
"We have forged a hard-fought, iron-clad privacy agreement with real teeth that protects students and families, because no one else, including the federal government, has stepped up to do the real work," AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement. "We can get angrier and angrier, or we can act decisively; anything less than legally enforceable provisions is simply a wish list."
As for those "real teeth," Microsoft would be liable for breach of contract if it violates any aspect of the aforementioned agreement. The protections become available to school districts on November 1. This has been the result of months of negotiations and the AFT is currently in active talks with OpenAI and Anthropic, hoping to get similar agreements in place.
This is just the latest push to regulate AI in schools. New York City recently announced a one-year moratorium on the technology for students up to eighth grade. Los Angeles went even further, announcing a one-year moratorium for all public school students.
