New York City Bans Generative AI for Pre-K Through 8th Graders in the Nation's Broadest School AI Moratorium
NYC will disable AI in 38 school tech contracts and ban student-facing chatbots through 8th grade, in what Mayor Mamdani calls the nation's broadest school AI moratorium.
Overview
New York City will ban student-facing generative AI tools in preschool through eighth-grade classrooms while allowing limited use in high schools, under a policy Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled on Wednesday, September 2, less than a week and a half before the September 10 start of the school year. Mamdani described the policy as the “broadest generative AI moratorium in the nation.”
What We Know
The city will disable AI features on 38 existing citywide education-technology contracts, though officials have not released a list of which products are affected, according to Chalkbeat New York. Mamdani’s education adviser, Ailish Brady, said the widely used digital tutor Amira and the digital version of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt “Into Reading” curriculum will both “turn off” their AI components, per the same report. An Amira spokesperson said the product is currently used in 222 schools, while an HMH spokesperson said “there is no student-facing AI in Into Reading.” Brady did not directly confirm whether Google’s Gemini chatbot, pre-loaded on many student Chromebooks, would be disabled, but advocates who met with city officials said they were told Gemini would be shut off, Chalkbeat reported.
The ban on student-facing AI from preschool through eighth grade will run for at least the coming school year, and officials said they will convene a coalition of educators, students, parents, union officials and experts to reassess the policy going forward, according to Chalkbeat. High schools have more leeway: they can use AI in career and technical education programs and in five approved pilot programs — Quill, Edia, Brisk Teaching, Playlab and Intel AI-Ready Schools — capped at a maximum of 50,000 students, or roughly 17% of the high school population. All high school students will also be required to complete two 45-minute AI literacy modules each year covering AI basics, bias and misinformation, Chalkbeat reported.
The policy also sets screen-time limits: students from preschool through second grade are not supposed to use individual devices, students in grades 3-5 are capped at 30 minutes of individual device use a day, and middle schoolers are capped at 45 minutes; there are no screen-time guidelines for high school, according to Chalkbeat. Technology supporting students with disabilities and English language learners is exempt, as are required reading and math assessments administered on computers. Teachers may use AI to plan lessons, translate materials or draft communications, but may not use it to grade student work, monitor behavior, develop special education plans or assist with student mental health issues, Chalkbeat reported.
The announcement followed a nearly two-month freeze on new education-technology purchases. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels ordered the freeze in early July, after an initial set of AI guidelines released in March drew fierce pushback from families who said it did not go far enough to limit AI for young children, and Samuels later acknowledged that the March policy “missed the mark,” according to Chalkbeat. During the freeze, principals said they were unable to renew routine, non-AI software such as digital hall passes and electronic gradebooks; one Brooklyn high school principal, granted anonymity to avoid reprisal, told Chalkbeat, “Two weeks before the start of school, we’re not sure what we’re going to be allowed to have and not allowed to have,” adding, “It’s a huge pain.” Officials lifted the freeze on Wednesday, but any new ed-tech purchase under $25,000 will now face additional review from the Education Department’s IT, legal and contracts teams, Deputy Chancellor Lindsey Oates told principals in a webinar; Oates warned the added reviews will “take some time,” according to Chalkbeat.
Reaction has been mixed. A coalition of advocates who had pushed for a two-year moratorium called the new policy “a step in the right direction” but raised concerns about the scale of the high school pilot programs, per Chalkbeat. Richard Buery, a former deputy mayor who now leads the Robin Hood Foundation, criticized the ban as too rigid, saying in a statement, “While well-intentioned, a blanket one-year AI ban, without exceptions, on all uses through middle school is not the right call.” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, who Chalkbeat noted has recently clashed with Mamdani on other policy priorities, said enforcement will largely fall on “school communities or individual educators to figure out after the fact if what their school uses fits the new policy.” A day earlier, at a new-teacher orientation at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Mulgrew had voiced broader skepticism about a ban’s workability, telling reporters, “How are we banning AI in a high school?” and adding, “The students are using it anyway. It’s embedded in so many platforms now,” according to Chalkbeat.
Mamdani acknowledged that enforcement will depend heavily on individual schools. “Whenever there’s been a shift, teachers have had to be at the forefront,” he said at a press conference, adding, “we trust that teachers, principals, superintendents will be there,” per Chalkbeat.
More than 4,000 new teachers gathered for orientation at Barclays Center on September 1 ahead of the school year, as the city aims to hire roughly 6,600 teachers this year, including a Teaching Fellows cohort of about 1,100, Chalkbeat reported. Some incoming teachers voiced their own uncertainty about the coming AI rules. Jasmine Hall, returning to a Queens high school after a stint at a charter school, said, “I really hope that there is incentive to steer kids away from AI,” adding, “The kids have just become accustomed to using it for everything,” according to Chalkbeat. Moshab Rahman, a 25-year-old new teacher who wonders how to use AI without letting students “offload” their thinking, called the issue “a real can of worms.”
What We Don’t Know
Officials have not released the list of the 38 education-technology products losing AI features, nor have they specified how the city will determine whether a product’s AI has been sufficiently disabled, according to Chalkbeat. The city has also declined to release survey results on how much AI is currently in use across its 1,600 schools despite repeated requests, and no detailed enforcement mechanism has been spelled out beyond individual schools and central purchase reviews, per the same report. Ed-tech expert Tom Liam Lynch, who previously worked on education technology for the department, said the late timing of the policy risks disrupting schools that plan technology decisions well before September, warning, “Schools are unfortunately going to be in a position where they have to scramble with this,” adding that this “doesn’t lead to what you really want when it comes to quality pedagogy,” according to Chalkbeat.