OpenAI has expanded its ChatGPT for Teachers initiative to 55 additional school systems across 20 states, adding more than 100,000 educators and staff members. The program now partners with over 100 K–12 organizations in 30 states, providing free access and training to more than 300,000 educators and staff.
The expansion includes one in five of the 20 largest public school districts in the United States. Introduced in 2025, the program initially reached nearly 150,000 teachers and staff. Free access for verified U.S. K–12 educators is available through June 2028 and is limited to administrators, faculty, and educators.
Data privacy protections are in place for 16 states under the Student Data Privacy Consortium framework, covering Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. California operates under a separate agreement. Data shared within a ChatGPT for Teachers workspace is not used to train OpenAI’s models by default.
Between January 1 and July 16, educators sent over 1.9 million messages related to time-saving tasks. Breakdown includes 900,000 messages about report cards and progress reports, 800,000 about lesson planning, and more than 100,000 each about substitute plans and teacher-evaluation materials.
OpenAI also conducted Summer AI Skills Jams in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation through its OpenAI Academy. More than 1,600 teachers, administrators, and district leaders participated, with 93% reporting they left with actionable insights and 96% planning to apply what they learned within 30 days.
The company is collaborating with the American Federation of Teachers on the five-year National Academy for AI Instruction initiative, aiming to equip 400,000 K–12 educators with AI skills.
