Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. On Wednesday morning, in a Manhattan press room containing about 50 reporters and union members, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the US announced an agreement with Microsoft that, among other things, prohibits the tech company from tracking student use of its AI tools and applying student and teacher data to train AI models.
The guidelines listed in the American Federation of Teachers’ deal with Microsoft apply to any school district “that desires the same principles” when forming their own customer agreements with the company and purchasing its AI products.
The union also gives Microsoft—and any other tech company that signs on (AFT President Randi Weingarten mentioned ongoing conversations with OpenAI and Anthropic during Wednesday’s announcement)—a 180-day deadline to delete records of AI data use from students and school districts on its active systems following a request.
Microsoft agreed not to use student and teacher data to train its AI — but there are exceptions. The guidelines point out “narrow safety and security” situations, including letting the company use “the minimum amount” of school user data to detect, prevent, investigate, or remediate harm to users or security threats to its AI products and retain it “for as long as reasonably necessary.”
The contract also lists “contractual remedies” for school districts that sign on, such as the ability to or discontinue Microsoft’s deployment of its AI systems if the company commits any material breaches of its agreement obligations.
The current guidelines do not present explicit, quantifiable rules for what is considered remediation by a “reasonable” time—it’s something that both Microsoft and the customer will “engage in good faith” to come up with.
When I asked Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith about specific guidelines on how an accountability process will work if Microsoft fails to comply with remediation on Wednesday, he largely dodged the question, saying that Microsoft has to publish reports that provide transparency to the AFT and school districts and have tight deadlines for fixes.
“Obviously, this [remediation process] becomes part of our broader contract with each school district, and all of those [existing] contracts already have built-in remedies,” Smith told Mother Jones. “I think that there’s just an unprecedented amount of transparency associated with the commitments that are in this agreement.”
When I asked again about specific steps that will be taken if Microsoft fails to comply, Smith said they are “connected back into the provisions that we have in our contract with each school district. Those can vary.”
“Mostly, what I find is that what people want when something goes wrong is just to go fix it. People don’t want to end up with more time with lawyers,” he continued. “That’s always an option if somebody wants to take action, but let’s just fix problems when they arise.”
While accountability applies to how each school district will work with Microsoft in the near future, the company seemingly not holding discussions now raises questions about the feasibility of contract enforceability. Microsoft, and other companies like Google, have a history of promoting their AI products to schools and educators, and a healthy skepticism is needed when relying in part on tech companies to police AI and previous failures of implementing educational technology.
Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers representing New York City public school educators and others, who were also taking questions immediately following the announcement, did not respond to the question.
The contract comes a week after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a one-year moratorium on AI use for elementary and middle school students in the city’s public schools, and the Los Angeles Unified School District announced restrictions to generative AI platforms for all students for the 2026-27 school year.
The AFT’s contract with Microsoft contains the sentence “When in doubt, protect the student.” on the bottom of each of the 31 pages. But exactly how any of these policies around AI use in schools will actually work remains unclear.