For one teacher planning alone, MagicSchool and Chalkie let you choose the standards before the lesson is written, and both have a free plan. Conker is the pick for quizzes tied to NGSS and TEKS, TeachAid for school-wide units, and Seesaw for PreK-6 schools that license it. None of them removes the last step, which is reading the output against the standard's own wording.
That last step matters. A study of 310 lesson plans written by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot for Massachusetts' 53 eighth-grade Government and Civic Life standards found that only 213 of 2,230 activities (10%) were designed for higher-order thinking (Trust, Maloy, Xu and Pelletier, 2025). The authors "strongly encourage teachers not to adopt any AI-generated lesson plan exactly as it is written." A plan can name a standard and still ask students to do something easier than the standard asks.
Four questions that pick the tool
- Does the tool name the standards your state uses? Common Core, NGSS and TEKS are named on vendor pages below; a state's own revised standards may not be. If a vendor does not name your set, treat "aligned" as unproven.
- Where does the alignment show up? In the learning objective, the activity, or only the quiz? A tool that tags a lesson with a code but does not change what students do has done the cheap half of the job.
- Are you planning alone or for a team? A free individual plan covers one teacher's week. Matching a department or district scope and sequence is a school-plan job, and several vendors below do not publish a price for it.
- Will students touch the tool? A teacher-only tool avoids student accounts altogether. If students use it, the age rules and the school's data agreement decide whether you can proceed. Our teacher-only tools guide covers that route.
The six at a glance
| Tool | Best use | Standards the vendor names | Main limitation | Price / free tier (checked October 20, 2026) | Privacy consideration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MagicSchool | Individual lesson plans with standards in the objectives | Common Core, state standards, example uses NGSS | No numeric free-plan cap published | Free; Plus $8.33/month billed annually | Students under 18 only via a school agreement |
| Chalkie | Lessons and worksheets mapped to a framework you choose | Common Core, NGSS, TEKS, C3 | State coverage beyond TEKS not stated | Free: 5 resources/week; Pro $6.65/month | Students never create accounts |
| Conker | Standards-aligned quizzes | NGSS and TEKS; Common Core not mentioned | No public pricing found | Unverified | AI provider and training use not stated |
| TeachAid | Full units for a school or department | None named on its page | Standards alignment listed as Enterprise | Free for teachers; school price not public | Core database in Canada |
| Seesaw | PreK-6 lessons in a school license | CCSS and key state standards; WIDA | School or district license only | No public price | Student-facing platform |
| Gemini in Google Classroom | Free planning inside Classroom | Tagging pilot excludes the US | Standards feature is a pilot | Gemini for Education free per Google | Not checked this run |
MagicSchool: best fit for a single teacher who wants standards written into the objectives
MagicSchool is the best fit for a teacher planning alone who wants the chosen standard built into the objective, the activities and the assessment, because the lesson plan tool tells you to "select or enter the standards you're teaching to build them into the learning objectives, activities, and assessment" (lesson plan tool). The page says it can use state standards, Common Core and other frameworks, and its worked example uses fifth-grade NGSS. Our directory lists it at 4.74 from 19 reviews.
Watch out for: the page describes a standards field, not a menu of every state's documents, so paste the standard's exact text when your state uses its own numbering.
Pricing: the pricing page lists a free plan with 80-plus teacher tools and no stated numeric cap, Plus at $8.33 per user per month billed annually or $12.99 billed monthly, and Enterprise at a custom price. Checked October 20, 2026.
Safety: the privacy policy says students under 18 may use the service only through an agreement with a school customer, and says MagicSchool does not use student data to train AI models. The district still has to sign that agreement; confirm with your own district before any student touches it.
Choose something else when you need a quiz bank mapped to a published standard, which is Conker's job.
Chalkie: best fit for mapping a lesson to a framework you pick by name
Chalkie is the best fit when you want to choose the framework first, because each generated lesson is "automatically mapped to your chosen curriculum framework," and the page names Common Core, NGSS and TEKS. Its FAQ lists Common Core and NGSS for the US. Our directory shows 4.88 from 26 reviews.
Watch out for: the page does not say whether other state standards are covered beyond TEKS. The FAQ says free users get "limited resource generations per week" without a number, while the pricing page says five a week; the pricing page is the more specific, so we quote it.
Pricing: the pricing page lists Free (5 resources a week), Pro at $6.65 a month ($79.80 billed yearly, 200 resources a month), Max at $12.99 a month (400 a month) and a Schools plan with no public price. Checked October 20, 2026.
Safety: per the FAQ, students never create accounts, results are not sold or used to train AI, and there is no automatic deletion period for stored results, so a school that needs a retention schedule must ask for deletion.
Choose something else when your state is not among the named frameworks and you cannot paste its text in.
Conker: best fit for quizzes tied to NGSS and TEKS
Conker is the best fit for a science or Texas teacher who wants a ready bank of assessments, because its homepage advertises "1000s of ready-made, K12 standards-aligned assessments," starting with NGSS and TEKS. Common Core is not mentioned on that page. For the wider quiz field see our quiz makers guide. Our directory lists no reviews yet.
Watch out for: the vendor's pricing pages did not load when I read them, so there is no verified price or free limit here: no public pricing found, unverified.
Pricing: unverified; check conker.ai/pricing.
Safety: the privacy policy says educators with authority to act on parents' behalf may allow students under 13 to use the service. It does not name the AI provider or say whether data trains models; both are unverified, so ask before use.
Choose something else when you need lesson plans or units, not quizzes.
TeachAid: best fit for a school or department building aligned units together
TeachAid is the best fit for an instructional coach or department building cross-classroom units, because it generates whole units with lessons, activities, slides and assessments. Its home page says teachers can use it "free forever" but lists alignment "to your standards and frameworks" as an Enterprise feature, and names no standards document. Our directory shows 5.00 from one review, a thin base.
Watch out for: the standards alignment that gives the product its pitch sits behind the school plan, and no price for that plan is public. A free teacher account is not proof that your state's standards are built in.
Pricing: free for teachers; school and Enterprise prices not public. Checked October 20, 2026.
Safety: the privacy policy says educator accounts are for adults, students do not create accounts, student names, responses and drawings are not sent to AI providers, and the vendor does not train general-purpose AI on that data. It says the core database is hosted in Canada, though some providers process data in the United States and elsewhere. Our directory record says United States hosting, so the two sources disagree; trust the policy and confirm with the vendor.
Choose something else when you want a single lesson tonight rather than a unit this term.
Seesaw: best fit for PreK-6 schools that already license a platform
Seesaw is the best fit for an elementary school that wants standards-aligned lessons inside a platform students already use, because its pricing page describes early literacy lessons "aligned to CCSS and key state standards" and 550 English language development lessons aligned to WIDA and state standards. Our directory shows 5.00 from three reviews.
Watch out for: the page says "Seesaw licenses are only available for schools or districts" and "we currently do not offer paid teacher licenses," and shows no prices. Our directory lists Seesaw as freemium; the pricing page I read does not mention a free tier, so check before you plan around one.
Pricing: three tiers, all "Talk To Sales"; the full AI suite is the top tier. Checked October 20, 2026.
Safety: this is a student-facing platform, so a school data agreement and the age rules come first. I did not read Seesaw's privacy policy in this run: unverified.
Choose something else when you teach grades 7-12 or have no school license.
Gemini in Google Classroom: best fit for free planning, with a standards gap for US teachers
Gemini in Classroom is the best fit for a teacher whose school already runs Google Workspace for Education and wants no-cost planning help, because Google says Classroom has "30+ no-cost AI tools" and Gemini for Education is "free of charge" (Google, January 21, 2026). Our directory shows 4.59 from 41 reviews for Gemini.
Watch out for: the same announcement describes tagging assignments with learning standards as a pilot, with standards from the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Mexico, and Italy "soon." The United States was not on that list. Check the current list before you rely on it.
Pricing: free per Google's announcement; which Workspace editions include it was not stated there.
Safety: I did not read Google's education privacy terms in this run: unverified. Your Workspace administrator controls access.
Choose something else when you need a US state standard attached to an assignment today.
General assistants and Khanmigo, in one line each
ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot are the best fit when you paste the standard's exact text and ask for a lesson, with no built-in standards library to rely on; that is how the study above produced its plans. Khanmigo is the best fit for US teachers who want standards-aligned plans from a nonprofit: Khan Academy's May 22, 2024 note offered free access to US teachers and mentioned standards-aligned lesson plans, but I did not recheck current terms, so treat that as unverified.
A worked plan: grade 5 science, one standard, three checks
This is a plan, not a record of a classroom. The standard is NGSS 5-PS1-1: "Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen" (NGSS).
- Generate. In MagicSchool or Chalkie, choose the standard (or paste its text) and ask for a three-lesson mini-unit.
- Underline the verb. The verb is "develop a model." For each activity, ask whether students build and revise a model or only label a diagram. Replace any activity that stops at "identify" or "recall."
- Test the quiz separately. Build five items in Conker and check that each asks students to use a particle model, not define "matter."
The verb check is the one step a tool cannot do for you, and it is the step that addresses the study's 10% finding.
Common Sense Media's caution
Common Sense Media rated AI teacher assistants (including MagicSchool and Khanmigo's teacher assistant, plus Gemini in Classroom and Curipod) "Moderate Risk" on August 6, 2025, and advised educators: "Always evaluate AI-generated material for accuracy, bias, and appropriateness before classroom use" (Common Sense Media). It also warned that many platforms make it too easy to push material straight to a classroom. Our view: use the standards field to save typing, not to skip reading. For the wider planning field, see our lesson planning tools guide, and for data questions our FERPA tools guide.
