Schools Rush AI Adoption While Student Data Privacy Lags Behind

The adoption of artificial intelligence tools in American schools has accelerated dramatically, but the policies meant to protect student data are struggling to keep up, according to reporting by Forbes contributor Sarah Hernholm.

A 2025 RAND Corporation survey of teachers, students, school leaders, and parents revealed that 54% of students and 53% of teachers used AI for schoolwork during the year—both figures representing increases of more than 15 percentage points from the previous year. Yet only 45% of principals reported having any school or district AI policy in place, and just 34% of teachers said their district had established guidelines specifically addressing AI and academic integrity.

The data privacy gap

The more troubling finding: student data privacy protections are rarely incorporated into the AI policies that do exist. While schools race to establish rules around AI usage for assignments and testing, the question of how student information gets collected, stored, and potentially used to train commercial AI models remains largely unaddressed.

Ohio became the first state to mandate AI policies for all public school districts under House Bill 96, with a compliance deadline of July 1, 2026. The state's model policy does reference data privacy, instructing districts to address protection of personally identifiable information and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). However, districts are not required to use the state model, and FERPA itself was written decades before modern AI data practices existed.

Beyond Ohio, the policy landscape remains fragmented. States including California and Idaho have proposed new data protection legislation, but these efforts are not universal and face implementation challenges. Meanwhile, recent major data breaches affecting education technology platforms like PowerSchool and Canvas have demonstrated the real-world risks of inadequate data safeguards.

Why it matters

Student data represents a particularly valuable and vulnerable resource for AI companies. Unlike adult users who can theoretically consent to data collection, students often have no choice in which platforms their schools adopt or how their academic work, behavioral data, and personal information get used. Without explicit protections written into AI policies, schools may inadvertently grant vendors broad rights to student data that could be used for model training or commercial purposes far beyond the immediate educational application. The gap between AI adoption rates and privacy policy development means millions of students are using these tools in a regulatory vacuum.

What parents should ask

Hernholm advises parents to actively question their school districts about three key areas: whether the district has adopted a specific AI policy, what data privacy agreements exist with AI vendors, and what data retention and deletion practices are in place. These questions become especially urgent as the school year begins and new AI tools get rolled out in classrooms.

The details in this report were first published by Sarah Hernholm in Forbes.