Teachers are going back to school and ChatGPT is going with them.
OpenAI announced 55 new partnerships with U.S. school districts on Wednesday, roughly doubling the reach of its ChatGPT for Teachers product. The signed districts represent more than 300,000 staff members and 2 million students. The product, a slightly modified version of OpenAI’s traditional enterprise offering, aims to onboard teachers with AI tools and give districts oversight.
The product is intended for adults only, as OpenAI does not yet integrate student accounts or student-facing features.
Not everyone agrees with AI in the classroom, as more and more students use it to complete assignments. A Pew Research Center survey last year found that more than half of teens have used AI chatbots to help with schoolwork, and more teens still believe their peers have used them to cheat. Some parents have started organizing against AI in schools.
Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education, said in a press conference on the rollout of ChatGPT for Teachers that improvements in AI capabilities make “teacher judgment, teacher guidance, and district oversight even more important than before.”
OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teachers last November and has committed to keeping it free through June 2028. Districts in 30 states are now on board the tool, OpenAI said, with the greatest adoption in the Los Angeles area and the Northeast. The company said several of the nation’s largest school districts are now participating, including Houston.
OpenAI’s product includes onboarding and prompts tailored to teachers. One company page suggests that teachers use ChatGPT to develop lesson plans and explanations of topics.
OpenAI says it doesn’t train are models for this product based on information that users send to the chatbot. The company has also signed data privacy agreements covering 16 states, the company said.
The company will provide it latest AI models in “waves” about the product, Belsky said, adding, “The goal is really to keep teachers and districts on the fence.”
She also said she hopes the product will help teachers “save time, support students and strengthen their own professional judgment.”
Christine Mai, innovation director for the Houston district, said during the briefing that her district has used ChatGPT to help staff write curricula and summarize documents. She said there needs to be “a human being in the circle.”
“The teacher is still the professional, right?” Mai said. “They still have to make the final judgment on whether they’re going to use AI in that way, then they’re also responsible for making sure that it’s accurate, that it actually benefits the students.”
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