Laird hopes the standard takes pressure off districts negotiating with tech companies
Elizabeth LairdDirector, Equity in Civic Technology, Center for Democracy & Technology
Elizabeth Laird, of the Center for Democracy & Technology, said she was hopeful that Microsoft's nationwide privacy standard takes some of the pressure off individual school districts to negotiate with large tech companies.
“What I’m hopeful about is that this takes some of the pressure off individual school districts to negotiate with large tech companies”
Reporting
Where this statement fits
Should schools pause student-facing AI despite Microsoft’s new privacy safeguards?
Microsoft and the National Academy for AI Instruction signed school-AI privacy and safety standards announced with the AFT and UFT on September 9. Fairplay’s Josh Golin welcomes the privacy improvements but calls for a five-year pause on generative AI in schools. New York City’s September 2 policy illustrates a different approach: pause most direct use through eighth grade while allowing restricted high-school pilots. Kristen Gonzalez and Carmen De La Rosa support the younger-grade ban but urge postponement of the pilots until the tools can be properly assessed.
Source and context
Reporting
About this source
AP/ABC News report on Microsoft extending the AFT/UFT AI-privacy standard nationwide, with reactions from CDT, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Before the quotation
Commenting on Microsoft's nationwide extension of the AI-privacy standard.
After the quotation
No further public follow-up had been reported as of this writing.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
Laird welcomes the standard as taking some of the pressure off individual districts to negotiate with large tech companies, a conditional endorsement of this specific mechanism rather than a full resolution of the broader pause debate.
- Recorded on
- Published here
- People and groups discussed
- Microsoft
Corrections to this statement
These notices document reporting corrections, classification changes, and topic-label updates.
Reporting correction
Correction to: Statement by Elizabeth Laird
- Previous language
- "could relieve individual districts from negotiating with tech firms alone"
- Corrected language
- "What I’m hopeful about is that this takes some of the pressure off individual school districts to negotiate with large tech companies"
We attributed a quotation to Elizabeth Laird that does not appear in the cited Associated Press report. We replaced it with her words as the report printed them and revised the title and summary to match.
This corrects our account of what happened.
AP/ABC News report on Microsoft extending the AFT/UFT AI-privacy standard nationwide, with reactions from CDT, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
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The Dispute Index. "Laird hopes the standard takes pressure off districts negotiating with tech companies". First published: 2026-09-17. Last updated: 2026-09-25. https://disputeindex.com/events/896-elizabeth-laird-of-the-center-for-democracy-technology