A Title I school can run a serious AI program on almost nothing. Seven tools in our directory are free enough to put in front of every teacher in the building this term: MagicSchool and Brisk Teaching for planning and feedback, Diffit for leveled reading passages, Khanmigo for math and reading practice, Canva for Education for family-facing materials, SchoolAI for a supervised student chat pilot, and Kami for students who need documents read to them. The harder question is not which tool. It is whether your Title I allocation can pay for the paid tier when the free one runs out, and the answer depends on whether your school runs a schoolwide or a targeted assistance program.
That question matters more this year than last. Congress set Title I, Part A at $18.427 billion for fiscal 2026, a $20 million increase on the year before, after a House appropriations bill proposed cutting it by $4.7 billion (CCSSO summary of the FY26 package, NAESP). Flat money, rising vendor prices, and first-quarter data landing on your desk in October: that is the squeeze this list is written for.
Which AI tools can a Title I school use without a purchase order?
Prices and free-tier limits below were checked on the vendor's own pages on October 11, 2026. Ratings are from our directory.
| Tool | The job it does | Best for | Price, checked October 11, 2026 | Student data and hosting | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MagicSchool | Drafts the planning and paperwork around an intervention block | A whole staff that needs one free starting point | Free forever; Plus $8.33 per user per month billed annually, or $12.99 monthly; Enterprise by quote (pricing) | Directory record states no FERPA position, no hosting location | Two student-facing features sit on the free tier, so student work can reach the vendor before any agreement is signed |
| Brisk Teaching | Writes feedback on student drafts inside Google Docs | Teachers who already grade in Docs | Free Forever with 20-plus tools; Schools and Districts tier by quote (FAQ) | Vendor states it stores prompts and outputs, and stores student names that appear in them | The vendor's own pricing page is unavailable, so a budget line needs a quote |
| Diffit | Rewrites a text at several reading levels for a small group | Reading intervention groups | Basic free; school plan is a flat annual rate tiered by enrollment, no published figure (plans) | Directory record states no FERPA position, no hosting location | The free plan only keeps resources made in the last 90 days |
| Khanmigo | Gives students guided math and reading practice | Schools that want student practice, not just teacher tools | Khanmigo for Teachers free to all US teachers; student access only through a school or district implementation (Khan Academy) | Under-18 use requires parental consent or a district partnership | The free part is the teacher side; the student side is the part that needs a contract |
| Canva for Education | Makes family letters, signage and student projects | Family engagement and multilingual communication | Free for verified K-12 educators and their students, with no paid tier to graduate into (Canva) | Directory record states no FERPA position, no hosting location | Verification can take up to seven days in busy periods |
| SchoolAI | Runs a supervised student chat activity a teacher can watch live | A single supervised pilot, not a program | Free trial capped at five Space launches a year; Pro and Scale by demo request (pricing) | Directory record: FERPA yes, collects student data, hosted in the United States, no minimum age | Five launches a year is a pilot allowance, not a term's worth of teaching |
| Kami | Reads documents aloud and lets students annotate them | Students with reading accommodations | Kami App free forever plus a 30-day Premium trial; Companion sold at school level only, no published figure (plans) | Directory record: FERPA yes, collects no student data, hosted in the United States | The free Basic tier is ten-plus tools; the vendor does not publish what Premium adds |
How did we pick these seven, and what did we leave out?
The pool was the 138 tools listed in the AI Educator directory on October 11, 2026. Nobody pays for inclusion here and nobody paid for a place on this list.
Three filters did the work. A tool had to have a tier a teacher can start using today without a signature. It had to do a job that Title I money is actually spent on: reading and math intervention, small-group instruction, family engagement, and the staff capacity to run all three. And its free tier had to be usable rather than decorative, so a five-prompt trial did not count.
What that ruled out is the more useful half of the story. Every tool in our directory that answers only "contact us" on price was excluded, and there are fourteen of them. Grammarly was left out: its directory rating is 2.71 across seven reviews, the lowest of any widely used tool in the catalog. Quizlet is not in the directory at all. Two tools with the strongest published privacy records, AILitKit and Glint, were left out because neither does a core Title I job. And the most popular tool in the whole catalog by review count, Gemini Notebook, which Google renamed from NotebookLM in July 2026, was left out of the seven because it has no school-level agreement a Title I coordinator could sign.
Can Title I funds pay for AI tools?
Yes, in most cases, but only if the spending is tied to a named activity in your plan, and what counts depends on which kind of Title I school you are.
A schoolwide program has the wider latitude. North Dakota's state guidance puts it plainly: schoolwide schools "may use Title I, Part A funds to upgrade the entire educational program for all students," provided the spending rests on a comprehensive needs assessment and matches the schoolwide plan (NDDPI Title I quick reference). South Dakota's March 2026 guidance lists "devices and software to access and collaborate using digital materials" as an allowable schoolwide cost and marks software licenses allowable under Title I, Part A (SD DOE use of funds).
A targeted assistance program is tighter. There, funds "may be used only for allowable activities that directly support participating students," meaning the students identified as most at risk of missing state standards. South Dakota adds the practical trap: if a device or license also serves another program, "the cost must be prorated accordingly." So a building-wide teacher license bought with targeted assistance money is a finding waiting to happen unless the allocation is split.
Two conditions apply either way. North Dakota's guidance excludes "technology that is not tied to an allowable activity, program, or intervention," which is the line that catches a tool bought because it was impressive rather than because it serves a plan. And South Dakota warns that "the absence of a specific cost does not imply that the cost is automatically allowable or unallowable," which is why the last step in this section is always a call to your state Title I program staff rather than a judgment made from a blog post. Your own state's rules govern.
One thing worth knowing before you search this question yourself. The most detailed public answer to "can federal funds buy this AI tool" is published by a vendor about its own product. MagicSchool's federal funding page names Title I, Title II, Title III, Title IV-A, IDEA and Perkins V as streams districts can use, and says schools "can use Title I funds to integrate MagicSchool into their instructional strategies," without citing a statute, a regulation or any Department of Education guidance (MagicSchool, April 2, 2025). The claim may well be correct for a given school. It is a marketing page, not an allowability determination, and our view is that no procurement file should rest on one.
What does MagicSchool's free plan actually give a Title I teacher?
MagicSchool is the best fit for giving a whole staff one free starting point, because its free tier carries more than eighty teacher tools rather than a sampler, and it holds the highest review count of any planning tool in our directory at 4.74 across nineteen reviews.
The work it does well is the writing around an intervention block rather than the teaching inside it: the small-group plan, the parent note explaining why a child was pulled out, the differentiated version of a worksheet, the rubric. For a school where one interventionist covers four grade levels, that is the paperwork that eats the day.
Watch out for: two student-facing features, Quizzes and Class Writing Feedback, sit on the free tier. That means student work can reach the vendor before anyone has signed a data agreement, which is a different risk from a teacher-only tool. Decide deliberately whether staff may use those two.
Pricing: free forever for individual teachers; Plus is $8.33 per user per month billed annually or $12.99 billed monthly; Enterprise, which is the tier that carries a custom data privacy agreement and single sign-on, is quote-only (pricing page, checked October 11, 2026).
Safety: our directory record states no FERPA position, no minimum age and no hosting location for this tool, so there is nothing documented to put in a procurement file. The vendor's Enterprise tier is where a custom data privacy agreement appears, which tells you the free tier does not have one. Before any student-facing use, read the current privacy policy yourself and confirm with your district whether a signed agreement is required.
Is Brisk Teaching free enough to skip a purchase order?
Brisk Teaching is the best fit for written feedback at scale in a school that already lives in Google Docs, because its Free Forever plan carries more than twenty tools rather than a trial, and at 4.77 across thirty-five reviews it is the most-reviewed free teacher tool in our directory.
It works as a browser extension on documents that already exist, which matters in a Title I building where the obstacle to any new tool is usually the twenty minutes of setup nobody has.
Watch out for: the vendor's pricing page returns an error, and the Schools and Districts tier is quote-only, so you cannot build a multi-year budget line from published figures. The free Podcast Generator caps output at two minutes.
Pricing: Free Forever with 20-plus tools, including the Quiz Maker, Lesson Plan Generator and Rubric Maker; new accounts get fourteen days of Premium first. The Schools and Districts tier says to contact the vendor for pricing (FAQ, checked October 11, 2026).
Safety: the vendor states it is FERPA and COPPA compliant, and describes what it stores: prompts and generated outputs, including student names that appear in them, but not the underlying student work such as an essay's text. Student-facing use runs through Brisk Boost, where students only meet activities a teacher approved. Accounts are required. A compliance statement from a vendor is the vendor's statement, not an audit, so confirm with your district whether its data agreement covers a browser extension.
Does Diffit solve the reading-level problem in a small group?
Diffit is the best fit for reading intervention groups, because its one job is rewriting a text at several reading levels, which is the daily task in any Title I reading block, and it carries a 4.20 rating across five directory reviews.
The use case is narrow and real: one article, five versions, so a group reading three grades apart can discuss the same content. That is the task a general chatbot does unevenly and this tool does the same way every time.
Watch out for: the free plan only gives you access to resources made in the last 90 days. Build a unit in September and by January it is gone unless you downloaded it. Download everything you intend to reuse.
Pricing: Basic is free. The schools plan is described as a flat annual rate tiered by student enrollment, with no figure published; district pricing is by quote, and no individual teacher price appears on the plans page (plans, checked October 11, 2026). Our earlier reporting on a $14.99 individual price remains unverified at source.
Safety: our directory record states no FERPA position, no minimum age and no hosting location. The tool's core use is teacher-side, which keeps student data out of it, and our view is that this is the safest way to use it in a Title I school: the teacher pastes the text, not the student.
Is Khanmigo really free for teachers, and what costs money?
Khanmigo is the best fit for a school that wants student practice rather than only teacher tools, because Khanmigo for Teachers is free to every US teacher, with Microsoft donating the infrastructure that pays for it (Khan Academy).
For a Title I school, the appeal is that the underlying content is Khan Academy's existing math and reading library, already aligned to standards, already used in thousands of intervention schedules.
Watch out for: the free part is the teacher side. Student access "is only available through school or district implementations," and under-18 learners need parental consent or a district partnership. If your plan was free one-to-one tutoring for a cohort of students, this is not it without a district agreement.
Pricing: Khanmigo for Teachers is free for US teachers; Khanmigo for Districts is arranged by contacting Khan Academy's partnership team, with no published figure (Khan Academy blog, dated May 20, 2024 and updated March 20, 2025; checked October 11, 2026).
Safety: the under-18 consent requirement is itself the safety mechanism, and it is stricter than most tools on this list. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with a long-standing school data practice, but the specific terms a district signs are the ones that govern; ask for them before any student rollout.
Why is Canva for Education on a list about intervention?
Canva for Education is the best fit for family engagement work, because it is the only tool here that is free with no paid tier to graduate into, and it holds a 4.62 rating across thirty-nine directory reviews, the second-highest review count in the catalog.
Family engagement is a Title I requirement, not a nicety, and it usually arrives as a pile of letters, translated notices, back-to-school signage and conference handouts. That is design work schools rarely have anyone to do.
Watch out for: verification. You enter your country and school and may be approved instantly, or you may have to upload a document proving you teach, which the vendor says normally takes up to 24 hours and "up to 7 days" when it is busy. Start the verification before you need the first letter.
Pricing: free for K-12 educators, their students, and qualified districts and institutions, described by the vendor as "100% free, with no hidden fees, paywalls, or trial periods," and including the premium Canva Pro design tools plus Google Classroom and Canvas integrations (Canva for Education, checked October 11, 2026).
Safety: our directory record states no FERPA position, no minimum age and no hosting location for this record. The vendor describes content filtering suitable for schools. Student accounts are part of the offer, so this is one to put through your district's normal approval, not a quiet staffroom adoption.
Can SchoolAI run a student chat pilot a Title I school can defend?
SchoolAI is the best fit for a single supervised student chat pilot, because it is one of only twenty-four free or freemium tools in our directory that states a FERPA position, and one of the few that also names where it hosts data: the United States.
Its design assumption is supervision. A teacher launches a Space, students work inside it, and the teacher watches the conversations live. For a school that has to show a board or a parent how student AI use is overseen, that is a feature you can point at.
Watch out for: the free tier is capped at five Space launches a year. That is a pilot allowance. If you plan to use this weekly with a class, you are planning a purchase, and the purchase has no published price.
Pricing: the Free Trial plan allows five Space launches a year, with a 10MB file upload limit and access to a library the vendor puts at more than 200,000 premade Spaces; Pro and Scale are both quote-only through a demo request (pricing, checked October 11, 2026).
Safety: our directory record states FERPA compliance, United States hosting, that the tool does collect student data, and no minimum age. The vendor additionally claims COPPA and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance and 1EdTech certification, and says the free tier runs on a standard data processing agreement accepted through its terms of service. A standard agreement accepted by clicking is not the same as an agreement your district's counsel negotiated; if students will use it, ask which one you are on.
What does Kami do for students with reading accommodations?
Kami is the best fit for students who need documents read aloud or annotated, because it is one of only nine free or freemium tools in our directory that both states FERPA compliance and says it collects no student data at all.
In a Title I building, the students who need text read to them are rarely all on an IEP or a 504 plan. Many are simply reading two years below the text in front of them. A tool that does this for everyone, without a referral, is doing intervention work under a different name.
Watch out for: Kami Companion, the AI assistant, is sold at school and district level with no individual free plan, so the free tier is the document and annotation side rather than the AI side.
Pricing: the Kami App is described as "free forever" with a 30-day Premium trial for new teacher accounts; Basic carries ten-plus tools, Google Drive and OneDrive integration and unlimited collaborators. No dollar figures appear on the plans page, and the vendor does not list what Premium adds (plans, checked October 11, 2026).
Safety: our directory record states FERPA compliance, no student data collected, United States hosting and no minimum age. That combination is the strongest published record of any tool on this list, which is why it appears here despite the thinnest review count at 5.00 across two reviews.
What do the directory numbers say about free AI tools and student data?
Of the 138 tools in our directory on October 11, 2026, 92 have a free or freemium tier, 31 are paid only, and 14 publish no price at all. For a school that has to document why it chose a tool, that last group is effectively unbuyable: you cannot write a comparison for a federal file against "contact us."
The record thins out further where it matters most. Of those 92 free and freemium tools, 55 state a FERPA position and 37 state nothing. Fifty-two say where they host data, which means 40 do not. Thirty carry an independent 9ine security assessment. Nine both state FERPA compliance and say they collect no student data.
Read that the honest way round. A blank in our record is not evidence that a tool mishandles data; many of these are small vendors who have never been asked. But a Title I school is exactly the school most likely to be asked to show its working, and on today's catalog it can only show it for a minority of the free field. If you want the tools that have been looked at independently, our security assessments page lists them.
How should a Title I school choose between them?
Three questions, in this order, settle it.
Is this a schoolwide or a targeted assistance purchase? Schoolwide can upgrade the program for everyone, so a staff-wide teacher license is defensible. Targeted assistance can only serve participating students, so the same license needs prorating or a different funding source. Answer this before you look at a single tool, because it eliminates half the options.
Does a student touch it? If only teachers use the tool, the data question mostly disappears and you can move fast: Diffit, the teacher side of MagicSchool, Brisk for drafting feedback. If students log in, you are in procurement, and procurement takes weeks you should start now rather than in January.
What happens when the free tier runs out? This is the question that catches schools. Canva for Education has no cliff. Khanmigo's teacher tools have no cliff, but its student side does. Diffit's 90-day window and SchoolAI's five launches a year are cliffs with dates on them. Our view is that you should pick the tool whose paid tier you could actually afford next year, because a free tool your staff cannot live without and you cannot buy is a problem you have created for yourself.
What about Quizlet, ChatGPT and Gemini Notebook?
Quizlet is the retrieval-practice tool students already use without being told to, and it earns its place in homework routines, but it is not in our directory and its school-level data terms are the thing to check before you make it official.
ChatGPT, rated 4.35 across twenty-three directory reviews, is the most capable general tool here and the least suited to being handed to a class: for a Title I school our view is that it belongs on the teacher's side of the building, where it drafts and summarizes, not on a student device.
Gemini Notebook, which Google renamed from NotebookLM in July 2026 and which tops our catalog at 4.84 across ninety reviews, is outstanding for turning a stack of documents into something a teacher can question, and it is the tool we would reach for to read a comprehensive needs assessment. It has no school agreement to sign, so keep it staff-side too.
What stops a rollout even when the money is fine?
District and state AI policy, and the deadlines are live right now. Maryland's Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act, SB 720, took effect on June 1, 2026, the state education department published its K-12 guidance on June 25, and districts have 120 days from publication to adopt their own policy (Conduit Street). Frederick County Public Schools, which enabled Google Gemini for middle and high school students in August 2026, spent its September 9 board meeting hearing teachers object that students were prompted to use AI "at every single click," with the board's deadline to adopt a policy falling on October 22 (Government Technology).
That sequence is the one to learn from. The tool was free, the rollout was fast, and the policy arrived afterward. A Title I school has less room for that mistake than most, because its spending is audited and its families are the ones least able to absorb a reversal. Check your state's requirement and your district's policy before the free tier tempts you into a program.
The bottom line
Start with Canva for Education and Diffit this week, because neither needs a signature and both do work your staff is already doing by hand. Add MagicSchool as the staff-wide free hub and Brisk Teaching if your school grades in Google Docs. Hold SchoolAI and Khanmigo's student side until you know whether you are a schoolwide or a targeted assistance program and what your district's AI policy now says, because both of those are purchases dressed as free trials. Then call your state's Title I program staff before you commit the money, and keep the comparison you used, because that document is what turns a good decision into a defensible one.
If you want the wider field, our guides to free AI tools for teachers and to what FERPA actually requires of these tools go deeper on price and privacy, and the lists for paraprofessionals and intervention teachers cover the two roles Title I funds most often pay for.
Dan Fitzpatrick is The AI Educator. He has trained more than 150,000 educators and advises schools, districts and government bodies on AI strategy. More from Dan.
