Microsoft teamed up with America’s second-largest teachers union to release a “National AI Safety & Privacy Standard” Wednesday, and critics are warning about the union’s left-leaning bias and the coalition’s apparent absence of engagement with parent associations or parental rights groups.
The American Federation of Teachers, its New York City affiliate United Federation of Teachers, and Microsoft jointly presented the standard, aiming to establish “legally enforceable protections to ensure the safety of students, families, and educators” following “months of intense negotiations and in the absence of any meaningful federal and state rules.”
Microsoft says the policy will go into effect on Nov. 1 for every school district that already has contracts with the company, and districts will not have to wait until renewal or to opt in.
“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.
The AI company Anthropic, when launching its Claude for Teachers program, noted that it, too, was working with AFT “to align our terms and privacy practices with gold standards they’re developing.”
Yet critics sounded the alarm.
“After reviewing this agreement, one thing is clear: Parents were intentionally left out of the equation,” Tina Descovich, CEO of the parental rights group Moms for Liberty, told the Daily Signal in a statement Friday.
The Daily Signal asked Microsoft, AFT, and UFT whether they included parent groups or school board associations when drafting the standard. The Daily Signal also reached out to the national PTA and the National School Boards Association, asking if Microsoft or AFT approached them. None responded by publication time.
AFT Criticism
The AFT has aligned itself with Democrat candidates and leftist causes, advocating for student debt forgiveness, endorsing sex-rejecting procedures for minors, and opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
When approached for comment, the U.S. Department of Education expressed skepticism about AFT’s motives, citing claims that AFT advocated for keeping schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“While we’d like to believe that AFT’s motive is genuine, it’s hard to accept that the group who pushed to keep schools closed during COVID is now seeking a role in shaping AI policy out of concern for America’s children,” Savannah Newhouse, a department spokeswoman, told the Daily Signal in a statement Friday.
School choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, noted that the AFT adopted a resolution on AI this summer, prioritizing leftist causes.
“The AFT passed a resolution calling for AI regulation to ‘protect racial justice’ and prevent inequality, which is a bid to bake far-left Marxist ideas into the tools that will sit in classrooms,” DeAngelis told the Daily Signal.
He argued that the best way “to protect kids is to break the one-size-fits-all system controlled by the teachers unions and let a thousand flowers bloom with school choice,” breaking “a left-wing government monopoly” that allows “anti-parent teachers unions” to influence AI.
Schools or Parents?
While Weingarten noted that the agreement will “provide transparency and information to parents,” she emphasized that it will “give schools real control over AI tools in the classroom.”
“At Moms for Liberty, we believe parents, not union leaders, must hold all the keys to the AI toolbox,” Descovich said, mentioning her organization’s own AI model policy. “No one loves their child more than their parent. This ‘landmark agreement’ may have some key provisions that we agree with, but it falls short of what is needed to truly protect children.”
“Big Tech and Big Teachers Unions have proven continually they cannot be trusted to protect our children,” she argued.