Federal Findings Tracker

FERPA (20 U.S.C. § 1232g) governs the disclosure of student education records and applies to every district receiving federal funds. Districts contracting with third-party vendors under the school-official exception (34 CFR § 99.31(a)(1)) rely on the longstanding Guidance for Reasonable Methods and Written Agreements, which predates generative AI and does not address it.

The Department has not issued a Dear Colleague letter, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or other guidance addressing generative AI vendors under the school-official exception. PTAC has published AI-adjacent material, including the AI Grading Compromise Facilitator Guide, the AI Tutoring Platform Data Leak scenario, and the AI-Generated Phishing and Deepfake Calls scenario. These are tabletop exercises within PTAC's Data Breach Scenario Trainings series: facilitator guides, slides, and handouts for running a role-play in a training room. They are useful. They are not guidance, and they are not a federal action as this tracker defines one.

The implication for districts: existing FERPA contract obligations apply to AI vendors today, and no AI-specific federal guidance exists to interpret them. A district making a school-official determination for a generative AI vendor is making it without a federal reference point, on the strength of its own reading of the vendor's language. Monitor studentprivacy.ed.gov.

The FTC's amendments to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule were approved January 16, 2025, published in the Federal Register April 22, 2025 (90 FR 16918), became effective June 23, 2025, and reached their general compliance deadline on April 22, 2026. The amended Rule expands the definition of personal information, adds notice requirements, mandates written information security programs, limits disclosure to third parties, and bars indefinite retention.

The Rule does not name AI model training. Whether an operator's use of children's inputs to train a model falls outside the scope of what parents consented to is an application of the Rule's purpose limits, not an express provision of it. Districts should treat the AI-training question as contestable under the Rule rather than settled by it.

The Commission has continued post-publication action, though the most recent action narrows rather than extends enforcement. On February 25, 2026, the FTC issued an enforcement Policy Statement declining to pursue operators that collect, use, or disclose personal information solely to determine a user's age, subject to conditions including purpose limitation, reasonable safeguards, deletion after verification, and notice. The statement does not amend the Rule. The Commission signaled it will open a review of the Rule to address age-verification mechanisms. An FTC workshop on age-verification technologies was held January 28, 2026. Recent K-12-adjacent settlements include Disney ($10 million, approved December 2025) and Apitor Technology (September 2025).

The implication for districts: with the April 22, 2026 compliance deadline now past, AI tools used in K-3 and elementary contexts must have operator-level COPPA practices documented and current. Districts relying on the school-authorization mechanism for COPPA consent should confirm in writing that vendors are not using student inputs for model training, precisely because the Rule does not say so on its face.

EO 14365, "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence," sets a federal policy of sustaining US global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national policy framework (§ 2), and creates an AI Litigation Task Force within the Department of Justice whose sole responsibility is to challenge state AI laws inconsistent with that policy, including on grounds that they unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce or are preempted by existing federal regulations (§ 3). The Order also directs Commerce to publish an evaluation identifying onerous state AI laws (§ 4), makes states with such laws ineligible for remaining non-deployment BEAD funds (§ 5(a)), and directs every agency to assess whether it may condition its discretionary grants on states not enacting or not enforcing conflicting AI laws (§ 5(b)).

Implementation has continued. The Task Force was established by Attorney General memorandum on January 9, 2026. Its first visible action was DOJ's intervention in xAI v. Weiser, the challenge to Colorado's SB 24-205. On April 27, 2026, a federal court stayed enforcement of SB 24-205 after the Colorado Attorney General stipulated to the stay. On May 14, 2026, Governor Polis signed SB 26-189, which repeals and replaces SB 24-205, weeks before its twice-extended June 30, 2026 effective date. SB 26-189 takes effect January 1, 2027.

On causation: Colorado's rewrite predates this Order. Governor Polis invited legislative revision when he signed SB 24-205 in 2024, and the August 2025 special session extended the effective date for the same reason. The Governor's AI Policy Working Group and industry pressure were the primary drivers of the substance. The federal posture and the xAI injunction bore on the speed of the final sprint. The replacement is evidence of the Order's environment, not proof of its effect.

The implication for districts: districts in states with their own AI transparency or impact-assessment laws are operating under a federal-state legal conflict that the Order has activated but not resolved. Note the limit of the Order's own carve-out: § 8(b) directs that the legislative recommendation shall not propose preempting otherwise lawful state AI laws relating to child safety protections, AI compute and data center infrastructure, or state government procurement and use of AI. That carve-out binds the legislative recommendation only. It does not restrain the Task Force, the Commerce evaluation, or the funding conditions. Whether a district must comply with state law the federal government is challenging remains, as of this refresh, an open question for district counsel.

NIST released a concept note on April 7, 2026, launching development of an AI RMF Profile for Trustworthy AI in Critical Infrastructure. The profile targets sectors including energy, water, transportation, and industrial control systems, and NIST is convening a Community of Interest before publishing a draft. The base AI RMF (1.0, January 2023) and Generative AI Profile (NIST AI 600-1, July 2024) remain the active voluntary frameworks. NIST states that AI RMF 1.0 is itself being revised. K-12 school systems are not designated critical infrastructure for purposes of this profile, but federal agencies (including the Department of Education, FTC, and OCR) increasingly reference NIST AI RMF principles in enforcement and guidance.

On June 2, 2026, the President signed an Executive Order on AI innovation and cybersecurity directing federal agencies to prioritize cyber defense of national security systems and civilian federal government information systems, and inviting AI developers to voluntarily give the government early access to frontier models. The Order is federal-agency-focused and does not extend K-12 into the critical infrastructure designation, but it elevates the policy environment in which the NIST CI Profile is being developed.

The implication for districts: NIST AI RMF alignment is not mandatory, but it is the de facto federal standard of care. Districts citing the framework in vendor RFPs and AI governance policies are aligning with where federal enforcement is heading. Districts that have written AI RMF 1.0 into procurement language should track the pending revision, since the citation in a signed RFP will point at a superseded version once it lands.

The Department finalized a Supplemental Priority on Advancing AI in Education on April 13, 2026 (91 FR 18774, FR Doc. 2026-07087), codified under 34 CFR Part 75 and Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0118, effective May 13, 2026. The priority covers projects that (a) expand the understanding of artificial intelligence, or (b) expand the appropriate and ethical use of AI technology in education. The Federal Register record reports that over 300 parties submitted comments on the proposed priority, published July 21, 2025 (90 FR 34203), with the comment period closing August 20, 2025.

The priority does not attach to every competition automatically. Under 34 CFR 75.105, the Secretary designates each priority as absolute, competitive preference, or invitational through a notice in the Federal Register, competition by competition. It is a standing option the Department may select, not a condition on ED discretionary funding generally.

The implication for districts: check each notice inviting applications rather than assuming the priority applies. In the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) FY 2026 competition, announced April 16, 2026 with its Federal Register notice on April 20 and its application instructions revised April 30, the AI Priority was designated Competitive Preference Priority 2, worth up to 5 additional points against a maximum of 20 across three competitive preference priorities. Returning Education to the States carried 10 points in the same competition. SEED FY 2026 closed June 1, 2026.

Published in the same Federal Register issue as the AI priority, 91 FR 18780 (FR Doc. 2026-07084, Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0679, 34 CFR Part 75) establishes a companion Supplemental Priority on Career Pathways and Workforce Readiness. Together with the AI priority, it signals the Department's intent to align discretionary funding with workforce-relevant AI competencies.

The implication for districts: CTE programs, dual-enrollment partnerships, and workforce-aligned curriculum proposals can pair the two priorities to strengthen ED grant applications. Both were designated in the SEED FY 2026 competition, where Career Pathways ran as Competitive Preference Priority 3 alongside the AI Priority at CPP 2, each worth up to 5 points. The Workforce priority also appears in the FY 2026 Postsecondary Student Success and Rural Postsecondary and Economic Development competitions.

NSF 25-035, the Dear Colleague Letter on Expanding K-12 Resources for AI Education, invited existing NSF awardees with K-12 AI or computer science education experience to submit supplemental funding proposals of up to 20 percent of the original award budget, capped at $300,000. The DCL operationalizes the goals of EO 14277, "Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth" (April 23, 2025), by routing existing-award supplements toward K-12 AI literacy efforts. The window is conditional rather than closed: the DCL states that consideration of supplemental support requests submitted after December 1, 2025 is subject to continuation of the funding opportunity. The DCL remains posted.

This DCL is one of several NSF K-12 AI funding actions from the same August 2025 rollout. The others include a Dear Colleague Letter on Expanding AI Career and Skilled Technical Workforce Opportunities in Support of High School Students (ExLENT and ATE awardees, December 15, 2025 date), a Dear Colleague Letter supporting K-12 AI teams for the Presidential AI Challenge (up to $25,000, November 7, 2025 date), and a STEM K-12 program solicitation. Only NSF 25-035 is tracked as a separate entry here.

The implication for districts: districts were not direct applicants. Districts should track which NSF-funded universities, research centers, and CS education networks in their region received supplemental awards under this DCL and what K-12 AI literacy resources those awardees plan to deliver into classrooms. The DCL prioritizes activities with the potential to be implemented in classrooms within 12 months of the supplement award date, which sets the window in which those resources should surface.

H.R. 8747, the K-12 AI Literacy and Readiness Act of 2026, was introduced by Representative Randy Fine (R-FL-6) on May 12, 2026 and referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce the same day. The bill would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to include certain curriculum expenses as permissible uses of funds, giving states and school districts express authority to use existing federal resources for AI literacy and AI-readiness activities. The bill does not authorize new appropriations; it clarifies allowable uses of current funds. As of this refresh, the bill has no cosponsors and no markup has been scheduled.

The implication for districts: if enacted, the bill would create explicit federal authority for using current ESEA funds toward AI literacy programs, clarifying a question districts currently navigate through Department guidance rather than statute. Districts that have already begun spending federal funds on AI literacy under the Department's April 13, 2026 AI Education priority (91 FR 18774) would gain statutory backing for that activity.

H.R. 5584, the Literacy in Future Technologies (LIFT) AI Act, was introduced on September 26, 2025 by Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ-7) and Rep. Gabe Amo (D-RI-1). The bill authorizes the National Science Foundation to make merit-reviewed, competitive awards to institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations to develop K-12 AI literacy curriculum, teacher professional development, and evaluation methods. On June 25, 2026, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee reported the bill favorably as part of a bipartisan package of ten AI bills advanced together. The bill now awaits House floor consideration.

The implication for districts: if enacted, LIFT AI would create a new NSF-administered pipeline of AI literacy curriculum, instructional material, and teacher training available to districts through NSF-funded institutional partners. Districts are not direct applicants but would benefit from downstream resources. A companion bill, H.R. 5351 (NSF AI Education Act of 2025), which expands NSF AI scholarships, fellowships, and K-12 teacher programs, was reported favorably in the same June 25, 2026 markup.