Seven AI tools document FERPA compliance and let a teacher do the work without a student account: Brisk Teaching, MagicSchool, Diffit, Canva for Education, SlidesAI, AILitKit and Glint. "FERPA compliant" is each vendor's own declaration, not an audit, and only Brisk, MagicSchool and Canva hold an independent 9ine security assessment. Whatever you paste into a prompt remains your responsibility.
Last updated October 6, 2026. Every price, free tier and compliance statement below was re-opened at source on that date, and the directory figures were re-extracted the same day. The change log is at the foot.
On September 2, 2026, New York City told 600,000 students in 2-K through eighth grade that generative AI is off the table for the school year (NYC Public Schools guidance). The day before, Washington DC's Office of the State Superintendent published a model policy that bars AI from IEP and 504 eligibility decisions and keeps grading under a teacher's final call (OSSE, September 1, 2026). A month on both still stand, and Oklahoma has put the same principle into statute. The line they draw runs straight through the teacher's laptop: plan with AI, translate with AI, draft the parent letter with AI, but keep students and their records out of it.
That is the line this post is written for. It is for the US teacher who wants to keep using AI on their own side of the desk and needs to know which tools can truthfully say "FERPA compliant", what that phrase does and does not cover, and which ones never need a student account at all. UK readers can read FERPA as the rough equivalent of UK GDPR and the ICO's Children's Code, and I say where each tool stands on that too. If you are looking for a student-facing tutor, this is not the list for you; nothing here puts a chatbot in front of a child.
How This List Was Built
The pool was the whole aieducator.tools directory, 138 tools as of October 6, 2026, because FERPA cuts across every category. I filtered for four things: the vendor documents FERPA compliance (on the directory record or on its own trust page, which I read and cite), the teacher can do the whole job without creating a student account, the free tier is real rather than a demo, and the tool leaves the judgment with the teacher. Nobody pays to appear in the directory or on this blog, and vendors cannot buy a place on this list.
Two groups were left out on purpose. I excluded every AI grading tool, because grading is the workflow most likely to send a child's work to a vendor and because NYC prohibits it outright and DC allows it only with a teacher deciding; those tools are weighed separately in the best AI grading tools for teachers. I also excluded consumer chatbots used on a personal account (ChatGPT, Gemini in a personal Gmail, Claude), because a personal account has no agreement with your district and FERPA compliance is an agreement, not a feature. Pricing and privacy pages verified October 6, 2026.
What the Directory Data Says About FERPA
Of the 138 tools listed in the directory on October 6, 2026, 38 declare FERPA compliance, 50 mark it as not applicable, 5 declare that they are not compliant, and 45 leave the field blank. A blank means the vendor has not filled in the record, not that the tool is non-compliant, which is why I opened the trust pages of the four best-known tools below rather than quoting our own record for them. Two numbers matter more than the headline count. Only 16 of the 38 FERPA-declaring tools also declare that they collect no student data. And of the 28 tools that set an 18-and-over minimum age, meaning they are built for staff only, 12 still say they collect student data. Teacher-only does not mean student-data-free. What you paste into the box is the data.
Those counts have moved since this article was first published a month ago, and the direction is worth noting: the directory grew from 126 tools to 138, FERPA declarations from 33 to 38, and the number of tools declaring both FERPA compliance and no student data from 14 to 16. The blank column did not move at all. It still sits at 45, which is a third of the catalog, so a third of the market is telling schools nothing about this on the record.
FERPA compliance is a promise about what the vendor does with student records. It says nothing about what you put in the prompt.
What can teachers still use AI for under the new NYC and DC rules?
Under both sets of rules teachers can still use AI to plan lessons, create and adapt materials, translate, and draft communications home, and neither city can stop that: it is the student-facing side that has been paused. NYC permits lesson planning, scheduling and administrative work, and prohibits grading and crisis management; roughly 40 learning tools will have their generative features switched off on school devices, tools whose AI cannot be disconnected are removed, and companion chatbots are barred in every grade, high schools included.
DC sorts the same question into three colors (OSSE). Red is prohibited and covers "high-stakes decisions that demand human judgment": surveillance, student discipline, teacher evaluations, and IEP or 504 eligibility determinations. Yellow is allowed with safeguards and is where reviewing and grading student work sits, and so, worth noticing, does drafting IEP language. Green covers lesson planning and adapting materials, with a human in the loop. The distinction matters for the tools below: writing the words of a plan is a yellow-zone task in DC, while deciding who qualifies for one is red.
And this is no longer only a big-district story. Oklahoma's Senate Bill 1734 took effect on July 1, 2026 and states that "artificial intelligence tools shall not be used as the primary basis for student grading, discipline, placement, promotion, retention, or other high-stakes educational decisions", with every AI output "reviewed by an educator or authorized school employee prior to use in instruction, feedback, assessment, or decision-making" (bill text); its districts must adopt AI policies before the 2027-28 school year. FutureEd's tracker, last updated July 13, 2026, counted 77 bills across 27 states with 10 enacted. So if your district is neither New York nor DC, the question is when your state gets there, not whether. Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed more than 2,000 US public school teachers between February 9 and March 2, 2026 and published in May 2026 that 82 percent had received no formal guidance on applying AI across their work tasks. That gap is what all of this is rushing to fill.
The Comparison Table
| Tool | Best for | Pricing (verified Oct 6, 2026) | Student account needed? | FERPA / COPPA | Data hosted | Independent security assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brisk Teaching | Feedback and leveling in Docs | Free Forever with 20+ tools; Educator Pro and district plans quote-based | No | Vendor FAQ: FERPA and COPPA compliant, SOC 2 (Oct 2025) | Not stated | Yes (9ine) |
| MagicSchool | Widest staff toolset | Free; Plus $8.33/mo billed annually or $12.99/mo | No (free plan has no student tools) | Vendor: FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2, Ed Law 2-D | Not stated | Yes (9ine) |
| Diffit | Leveled reading passages | Free (90-day content access); teacher and school licenses quote-based | No | Vendor: FERPA, COPPA, "no student data" | Not stated | No |
| Canva for Education | Slides, posters, visuals | Free for verified K-12 teachers | No | Vendor: FERPA and COPPA certified, National Data Privacy Agreement | Not stated | Yes (9ine) |
| SlidesAI | Text to slide deck | Free (12 decks/yr); Pro $10/mo; Premium $250/yr | No | Declared: FERPA, COPPA, GDPR; collects no student data | US | No |
| AILitKit | AI literacy without student AI use | 3 free guides then 1/month; teacher £59/yr, department £249/yr | No, ever | Declared: FERPA, COPPA, GDPR; collects no student data | EU | No |
| Glint | Visual supports and social stories | Free tier; $18/mo or $150/yr | No | Directory record: FERPA, COPPA, GDPR, no student data; vendor site says "FERPA & COPPA aligned" | US | No |
The "FERPA / COPPA" column is the vendor's declaration, on our directory record or its own trust page, and not an audit. The last column is the independent one: the 9ine security assessment is carried out by a third party, and 36 of the 138 tools in the directory hold one.
Best for feedback and leveling inside Google Docs: Brisk Teaching
Brisk Teaching is the best fit for a teacher who lives in Google Docs and Classroom and wants feedback, leveled texts and quizzes generated where the work already sits, because it runs as a Chrome extension on the teacher's account and its FAQ states plainly that it is FERPA and COPPA compliant and SOC 2 compliant as of October 2025. Directory rating: 4.77 from 35 reviews, one of the four most reviewed tools in the listing.
The workflow is the point. You open a student's Doc, click Brisk, choose a feedback style (glow and grow, rubric-based, next steps) and it drafts comments you then edit. Level a text to three reading levels, turn a YouTube video into a lesson, build a quiz from an article. Brisk says it does not store the underlying student work it processes, though it does retain your inputs and its outputs, so a student name typed into a prompt is retained too. That is the honest version of "no student data" and it is worth reading twice.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool is that Brisk works inside the document rather than in a separate tab you copy to and from. What NYC's decision adds is a live example: Brisk is one of five tools the city is piloting in high schools this year, with teacher-set guardrails and a cap of ten to twenty minutes of student use a week. That says something about how the district's vetting went; it does not mean the student-facing features are cleared for your K-8 classroom.
Watch out for: feedback on student work is the gray zone this year. DC calls reviewing and grading student work a yellow-zone task with the teacher making the final call, and NYC prohibits AI grading outright, so in those cities use Brisk for leveling, planning and quizzes and treat the feedback tools as a district decision. The free plan carries 20-plus tools rather than the full set, with limits such as a two-minute cap on generated podcasts, and the AI writing detection feature should be switched off and left off. I explain why in Do AI Detectors Work?.
Best for a Google Workspace school that wants AI in the flow of existing work. Not for a teacher who wants a standalone platform or who works mainly in PDFs.
Pricing: a Free Forever plan with 20-plus tools; Educator Pro exists but Brisk does not publish the price; schools and districts are quote-based (verified October 6, 2026).
Safety: FERPA and COPPA compliant per the vendor FAQ, SOC 2 since October 2025, independent 9ine assessment held; hosting location and minimum age not stated on the directory record. GDPR not stated; UK schools should ask.
Best for the widest staff-only toolset: MagicSchool
MagicSchool is the best fit for a school that wants one FERPA-documented platform for every staff job from lesson plans to parent newsletters, because its free plan is, by design, teacher-only: the 80-plus teacher tools are included and the 50-plus student tools and Student Rooms are not. Directory rating 4.74 from 19 reviews, with an independent 9ine assessment.
That free-plan detail is the most useful thing I can tell a teacher in a district that has paused student AI. MagicSchool's pricing page lists compliance with FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2, GDPR and New York's Ed Law 2-D, and on a free account a student cannot log in and be put in front of the model. Read the free tier carefully all the same: it includes Quizzes and Class Writing Feedback, so student work can still travel to the vendor on a free plan even though no student has an account. The tools themselves are prompts with a form on the front: text leveler, rubric generator, behavior intervention suggestions, report card comments, IEP generator. The IEP generator is the one to handle carefully in NYC, where developing special education plans with AI is explicitly out, and in DC, where drafting the language is a yellow-zone task but deciding eligibility is red.
Compared with TeachAid, which builds whole standards-aligned units and holds a 9ine assessment of its own, MagicSchool is broader and shallower: more tools, less depth in any one of them. Compared with Brisk, it is a destination rather than a layer over your documents. I wrote up seven alternatives in MagicSchool Alternatives for Teachers if breadth is not what you need.
Watch out for: the outputs are fluent and generic in equal measure, and a leveled text will sooner or later drop the very sentence your lesson depended on. Read every one before it goes near a class. The thinking stays yours.
Best for a school standardizing on one platform with admin controls. Not for a teacher who wants the model inside Docs, or anyone tempted by the IEP tool this year.
Pricing: free plan (limited generations, no student tools); Plus $8.33 per user per month billed annually or $12.99 monthly; enterprise pricing on request (verified October 6, 2026).
Safety: FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2 and Ed Law 2-D per the vendor's pricing page, Common Sense Privacy certified, independent 9ine assessment held; hosting and minimum age not stated on the directory record. GDPR declared by the vendor.
Best for leveled reading passages without a student login: Diffit
Diffit is the best fit for a teacher who needs one text at three reading levels by tomorrow, because the whole job happens on the teacher's screen, the output goes out as a PDF or a Google Doc, and Diffit's pricing page states "we are both FERPA and COPPA compliant" and "we don't collect any student data".
Paste a URL, a PDF or a topic, pick a grade band, and Diffit returns an adapted passage with vocabulary, summary and comprehension questions, in 70-plus languages if you need the Spanish version for a newcomer. Students receive paper or a Doc. They never log in, which is why Diffit is the cleanest answer I have for a district that has paused student-facing AI but still expects differentiated instruction to carry on. The same logic applies to accommodations a plan has already promised, which is the ground covered in AI tools for writing 504 plans.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool's text leveler is the quality of the scaffolds around the passage, not the leveling itself. The gap the other way is that Diffit does one thing.
Watch out for: the free tier only lets you get back at content you made in the last 90 days, so the September materials vanish from your library by December unless you export them, and Diffit does not publish the price of an individual teacher license.
Best for reading-heavy subjects and English learner support. Not for a teacher who wants quizzes, feedback and slides from one tool.
Pricing: free tier (90-day access to your content); individual teacher licenses and flat-rate school subscriptions tiered by enrollment, both quote-based (verified October 6, 2026). Third-party reviews still quote $14.99 a month; that figure remains unverified, because Diffit's own pricing page sends both teachers and schools to a quote form.
Safety: FERPA and COPPA compliant and no student data collected, per the vendor's pricing page; hosting and minimum age not stated on the directory record; no independent 9ine assessment. GDPR not stated.
Best for slides, posters and classroom visuals: Canva for Education
Canva for Education is the best fit for a teacher making slides, anchor charts, newsletters and printables, because the full product is free for verified K-12 teachers and Canva's education trust page says it is FERPA and COPPA certified and a signatory to the National Data Privacy Agreement with state addenda. Directory rating 4.62 from 39 reviews, the most reviewed design tool listed, with an independent 9ine assessment.
The AI sits inside Magic Studio: Magic Write drafts text, Magic Design turns a prompt into a layout, and the presentation tools build a deck from an outline. None of it needs a student in the room. Verification is the friction: Canva asks for a teaching license or employment proof, and in the US, UK, Canada and Australia it wants the license specifically.
What sets it apart from SlidesAI is everything that is not slides. Where SlidesAI wins is speed from text to deck.
Watch out for: the moment you invite students into a class, you are in student-facing territory, and Canva itself says parental consent is on you for under-13s. Keep it on your side of the desk this year if your district has paused student AI, and use the exports.
Best for visual-heavy teaching and family communication. Not for text-level differentiation or feedback.
Pricing: free for verified K-12 teachers, with premium features and 1TB of storage included. Canva commits that "Canva Education will remain 100% free for K-12 (primary and secondary) educators, their students, as well as qualified school districts and institutions" (verified October 6, 2026).
Safety: FERPA and COPPA certified per Canva's education trust page, National Data Privacy Agreement signed, and the clearest statement of its kind on this list, that "Canva never uses student data to train AI models"; independent 9ine assessment held; hosting not stated on the directory record. GDPR declared by Canva for its wider product.
Best for turning a text into a deck in a minute: SlidesAI
SlidesAI is the best fit for a teacher who already has the notes and wants them as Google Slides or PowerPoint without the layout work, because it is one of only 16 tools in the directory that declares FERPA compliance and declares that it collects no student data, and it is hosted in the US.
You paste up to a thousand characters (on the free plan), pick a template, and it builds the deck inside Google Slides. That is the whole product, which is its strength: there is nowhere for a student's data to go.
What sets it apart from Canva is that it starts from your text rather than from a template. Where it loses is design range.
Watch out for: the free plan is 12 presentations a year with a 1,000-character input, which is one unit's worth of decks. The minimum age is 13-plus, but this is a teacher tool in practice.
Best for lecture-style lessons and PD sessions. Not for interactive lessons or anyone who needs images generated.
Pricing: free (12 presentations a year, 120 AI credits); Pro $10 a month or $120 a year; Premium $20.83 a month billed annually, $250 a year (verified October 6, 2026).
Safety: FERPA, COPPA and GDPR declared on the directory record, collects no student data, US hosted, deletion on request, minimum age 13-plus; no independent 9ine assessment.
Best for teaching AI literacy when students cannot use AI: AILitKit
AILitKit is the best fit for a school that has paused student-facing AI and still has to teach children what AI is, because the platform is teacher-only by construction (students never touch it), it generates AI literacy activities for any existing lesson, and most of them are unplugged. It declares FERPA, COPPA and GDPR compliance and no student data collection, with hosting in the EU.
This is the tool I would put in front of a New York principal, because the moratorium removes the tool from the child's hands and leaves the curriculum obligation exactly where it was. You upload a lesson, any subject, and get four activities with coaching notes written for non-specialists, differentiation built in, and alignment to eleven frameworks including the US Department of Labor's AI literacy framework, UNESCO and the DfE's guidance. Three of the four activities need no device. That is how I would teach AI literacy anyway.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool is that it does not try to be a general assistant; it does one curriculum job that no other tool on this list does. It launched in 2026, so evidence of use is thin: it carries a single directory review, rated 5.00, which is one teacher's view and not a track record.
Watch out for: pricing is in pounds, the company is UK-based, and a US procurement office will need to be comfortable with EU hosting. The free allowance is three guides at sign-up and then one a month.
Best for AI literacy across subjects without student devices. Not for lesson planning in general.
Pricing: three free guides, then one free guide a month; teacher £59 a year; department £249 a year; school £999 for up to 50 teachers; a trust rate of £799 per school a year for three schools or more is listed as a future feature. Billing is in pounds sterling (verified October 6, 2026). The tier above a single teacher was £149 a year when this article was first published and is now £249.
Safety: FERPA, COPPA and GDPR declared, collects no student data, EU hosted, deletion on request, minimum age 18-plus; no independent 9ine assessment.
Best for visual supports and social stories: Glint
Glint is the best fit for special education teachers, speech-language pathologists and paraprofessionals who make visual schedules, communication boards and social stories by hand, because it produces them from a prompt on the adult's account, carries a directory record declaring FERPA and COPPA compliance and no student data collection, and is hosted in the US. Read the vendor's own wording closely, though: its site says "FERPA & COPPA aligned", which is a softer claim than compliant and is not an audit.
Under the NYC rules, developing an IEP with AI is out; making the visual schedule that the IEP already calls for is teaching, and Glint does that job without a student record ever entering the tool if you describe the routine rather than the child. It lists a screen reader mode, dyslexia-friendly mode, high contrast and offline mode on its accessibility record, which is more than any other tool on this list.
What sets it apart from MagicSchool's social story generator is that Glint produces the visuals, not just the text, and it was built for this one job.
Watch out for: the temptation to type the child's name, diagnosis and behavior plan into the prompt. Do not. Describe the routine. And the gap between "aligned" and "compliant" is the kind of wording a district data officer will ask about, so take the question to them before a whole speech team adopts it.
Best for special education and speech teams building supports weekly. Not for general classroom planning.
Pricing: free tier; $18 a month or $150 a year, now published on Glint's own pricing page rather than inferred from a third-party listing as it was a month ago; enterprise pricing for schools on request (verified October 6, 2026).
Safety: FERPA, COPPA and GDPR declared on the directory record and "FERPA & COPPA aligned" on the vendor's site, collects no student data, US hosted, deletion on request, minimum age 18-plus; no independent 9ine assessment.
What About ChatGPT, Gemini, Khanmigo, Quizlet and NotebookLM?
ChatGPT on a personal account is not FERPA compliant in any sense your district would recognize, because there is no agreement; ChatGPT Edu, bought by the institution, is a different product with a contract, and the independent 9ine assessment on ChatGPT's directory record should be read as covering that institutional product, not your personal login. Google Gemini is the tool NYC named when it paused student-facing AI, but Gemini inside a district's Google Workspace for Education sits under Google's Workspace terms and remains a staff tool where the admin has switched it on; a personal Gmail does not count. Khanmigo is student-facing by design, so it is the wrong tool for this list even where a district agreement makes it FERPA-covered. Quizlet is a consumer study app with a 13-plus minimum age and no district agreement in the typical case, and it is not listed in the directory. NotebookLM, like Gemini, depends entirely on whether it is on a Workspace for Education account; as a teacher-side research tool with your own documents it is fine, and the Gemini Notebook record is the most reviewed entry in the directory.
How to Actually Choose
Start from the job, then ask two questions of every tool: does a student ever log in, and what am I about to type into it. The first question decides whether you are inside or outside your district's student-facing rules. The second is the one FERPA compliance cannot answer for you. A vendor's FERPA statement covers what the company does with education records it receives; it does not stop you creating a record by pasting a child's name, grade and behavior notes into a prompt. Outsource the doing, not the thinking, and never outsource the child.
Three rules a department head could adopt this week. If a tool needs a student account, it is a student-facing tool, whatever the vendor calls it, and it waits for the district's decision. If the job is planning, materials, translation or communication, pick from this list and paste nothing identifiable. If the job is grading, IEPs, discipline or a student's mental health, the answer in New York is no, in DC it is "only with a human deciding", in Oklahoma it is a matter of statute, and everywhere else it is "not until the board has read those documents".
Use the directory's filters to check the rest: the lesson planning and resource creation category holds 53 tools, of which 15 declare FERPA compliance and 18 declare that they collect no student data.
What I'd Do This Week
Pick Diffit or Brisk, one class, one text you were going to level by hand anyway. Do it with the tool, paste nothing but the text, and give students the paper. Measure one thing: did the lower-level version keep the sentence your question depended on. If it did not, you have learned the single most important thing about leveling tools, and you learned it without a student going anywhere near a chatbot.
The Bottom Line
For a teacher who wants to keep using AI while students cannot, Brisk and MagicSchool are the FERPA-documented platforms with independent assessments, Diffit is the cleanest no-login answer for differentiation, Canva and SlidesAI cover visuals and decks, AILitKit teaches AI literacy without a device, and Glint makes the visual supports special education teams need. Compare the rest, with their declared FERPA status and student-data records side by side, in the aieducator.tools directory. The rules keep changing. The job does not.
What Changed in This Update
Checked at source on October 6, 2026. The directory has grown from 126 tools to 138, FERPA declarations from 33 to 38, and tools declaring both FERPA compliance and no student data from 14 to 16; the 45 blank records have not moved. AILitKit's middle tier rose from £149 to £249 a year and it now carries one directory review. Glint's $18 a month and $150 a year are now published on the vendor's own site rather than taken from a third-party listing, and that site says "aligned" with FERPA and COPPA where our record says compliant, so both readings are now given. Brisk's free plan is described from its own FAQ as 20-plus tools. Canva's commitment never to train AI models on student data has been added. MagicSchool's free tier is shown more precisely: no student logins, but Quizzes and Class Writing Feedback are included. DC's policy is corrected to its three-zone form, in which drafting IEP language is permitted with safeguards while eligibility decisions are prohibited, and its publication date is September 1, 2026, the day before New York's announcement. Oklahoma's Senate Bill 1734 and FutureEd's bill count have been added, and the Gallup figure now carries its population and field dates. MagicSchool, SlidesAI, Diffit and Canva prices were re-checked and are unchanged. On October 16, 2026 the opening was rewritten to answer the question first; no figure or price changed.
Dan Fitzpatrick is a Forbes contributor, bestselling author (The AI Classroom, AI for School Leaders, The AI Educator), and founder of The AI Educator. He has trained more than 150,000 educators across 100+ countries. Read more from Dan.
