American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Partnerships with Ed Tech Companies, 2022-25: What We Know So Far
Summary Since 2022, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has engaged in “partnerships” with at least half a dozen educational technology (EdTech) companies, most of which have explicitly or implicitly stated that they hope that AFT can enlist its 1.7 million members to introduce generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools into classrooms across the United States. Here is a short list of potential conflicts of interest produced by AFT's EdTech partnerships: AFT has advertised free trial subscriptions to EdTech software to its members AFT has provided grants to school districts to train teachers on how to use AI tools– and the funding for those grants may have come from EdTech companies AFT’s ShareMyLesson.com promotes and facilitates the incorporation of generative AI tools into teachers’ work, hosts seminars for teachers with EdTech company staff to discuss their AI tools, posts about specific companies’ tools, and in some cases allows those companies to post directly to ...