The rules, and where a paste goes when the student was in it
Lesson 5 of 5 · The teacher's week
1 · Learn the move · Red-team audit
The rules below do not ask whether the tool is good. They ask what your district signed and what the law says about the record. The federal privacy law conditions a school's funding on not disclosing education records without consent, with an exception for a 'school official' the district has determined to have a legitimate educational interest [P]. A vendor becomes one by the district's determination and contract, not by its own terms [P]. The children's online privacy rule treats under-thirteens differently, and most consumer tools bar them outright [P]. A growing set of states now require a person, not a system, to make or review consequential decisions about a student, and some set rules for the tools themselves [S]; your state's guidance, where it exists, says which tools and which uses [S]. The red-team question for any paste is the one a district privacy officer would ask: was a student in it, by name or by anything that points at one child, and was the tool approved to hold that? If the answer to the first is yes and the second is no, the paste is a report to the district, not a lesson. No student goes in by name, and the policy outranks this page.
Here are the rules I work under: [paste your district's policy and your state's guidance in your own words]. Here is one thing I did with AI this week, with what I pasted and what came back: [paste, with every student taken out now even if they were not then]. Act as the district's privacy officer trying to find the line that becomes a report. For the paste: was a student in it, by name, by number, by date of birth, or by a combination that points at one child; was the tool one the district approved for that input; who sat at the keyboard and how old were they. For what came back: did I state a grade, a placement or a consequence from it as a conclusion? For every finding, quote the rule it touches. Do not tell me I was fine.
The facts this lesson rests on, dated
Each line names the source grade the lesson shows, [P] primary, [S] secondary, [M] unverified, and the day it comes due. Past that day, treat it as a question. Draft copy, not legal advice.
- FERPA conditions a school's federal funding on not disclosing personally identifiable information from education records without consent; the school-official exception requires the district to determine that the recipient has a legitimate educational interest and to keep direct control over the use [P] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- COPPA applies to the online collection of personal information from children under 13; a school may consent on a parent's behalf only for an operator's use that is for the school's benefit and no other commercial purpose, and most consumer AI tools bar under-13 use in their own terms [P] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- Oklahoma and Maryland enacted 2025-2026 measures requiring human review or oversight of consequential decisions about students made with AI; the tracker summaries were read, the enrolled texts were not [S] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- California's 2025 statute on AI in classrooms directs the state to issue guidance on safe and appropriate uses of AI for pupils and sets requirements on tools that interact with pupils; whether a given tool is within it is a question for the district and counsel [S] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- Idaho's 2026 statute addresses AI use in public schools with teacher-oversight language; the tracker summary, not the enrolled text, was read [S] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- The California Department of Education publishes guidance on AI in TK-12 that puts the human in the loop on every decision about a student and defers to the district's data agreements for any tool that touches records [S] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- The MultiState tracker counted 134 bills on AI in K-12 education introduced across the states in the 2026 sessions as of its April 9 update; the count moves weekly [S] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
- Georgia and Mississippi adopted AI-literacy provisions for K-12 in 2025-2026; the tracker summaries were read, the enacted texts were not [S] (researched Oct 6, 2026, not yet confirmed by a person, recheck by Dec 15, 2026). source
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
A sixth-grade teacher at Larkspur Middle, honest in the retrospective: on Monday she pasted a behavior log with three students' first names into a consumer chatbot to draft a note home, sent the note Tuesday, and used the chatbot's suggested consequence without changing it. The policy she had not read bans consumer tools for student work product and says a certificated employee makes every consequence decision. The red-team finds three findings and quotes the policy section for each. The first finding is a report to the district, and the lesson says so.
Write the prompt for this scenario as given, or swap in a real one from your own work. The score works the same either way.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.