Claude gives U.S. K-12 teachers a free year tied to state standards

Anthropic is making a direct move into classroom planning by giving verified U.S. K-12 teachers free access to Claude for Teachers for a full year. The offer runs for educators who sign up by June 30, 2027, and includes premium Claude capabilities, a Learning Commons connector, and teaching skills built around classroom preparation.

The product is less about generic chat and more about reducing the setup work around standards-based teaching. Through Learning Commons, Claude can reference academic standards across all 50 states, including smaller competencies beneath each standard and the usual order in which students learn them. Anthropic says that lets Claude draft lesson plans and student-facing materials with state standards and curricular structure already in view.

The launch also connects Claude to a broader K-12 tool ecosystem. Anthropic lists ASSISTments, Brisk Teaching, Canva Education, Coteach, Diffit, Eedi, MagicSchool, Snorkl, and TeachFX as connected tools for tasks such as generating math practice, adapting materials by readiness level, turning ideas into activities, creating diagrams, and reviewing classroom talk.

The more consequential part is that Claude for Teachers includes Claude Code and Cowork. Anthropic gives examples such as handing Claude a folder with class data, diagnostics, attendance, and notes so it can build a clearer picture of each student, or scheduling a recurring review of daily exit tickets at 4 p.m. to adjust the next lesson. The company says shared data is not used for model training and points to K-12 privacy terms and a FERPA-oriented Data Processing Addendum.

Education AI often runs into friction when students are the first users. Anthropic is choosing the teacher workflow first: standards, curricula, privacy terms, and recurring preparation tasks. That makes this launch a practical test of whether AI assistants can earn trust by improving instructional work before they reshape student-facing products.