The Tennessee Department of Education announced July 1 that it awarded more than $2.6 million in Perkins Reserve Grant funds to 58 school districts for the 2026-27 school year, tied to the state's FutureReadyTN plan and its four pillars: Credentials of Value, Seamless Transitions, Individualized Advising, and Work-Based Learning. "Our mission is to provide every student with the knowledge and skills necessary for success after graduation, whether they pursue college, enter the workforce, or serve in the military," said Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds.
The department released the outcomes data behind that mission alongside the grant announcement. Secondary students earned more than 77,400 industry credentials in 2024-25. Students in Early Postsecondary Opportunities are up to 88% more likely to pursue education after graduation, and students who receive personalized advising are twice as likely to have a clear postsecondary plan. The number worth writing on your whiteboard: Work-Based Learning students earn nearly $4,200 more per year than non-WBL students without a postsecondary degree, measured eight years after high school. Eighty-five percent of CTE teachers surveyed agreed their pathways prepare students for college and careers.
Anthropic launched Claude for Teachers on Tuesday, a free version of its AI assistant built for verified K-12 educators in the U.S., Chalkbeat's Lily Altavena reported July 14. The product joins Google, OpenAI, and Khan Academy in marketing AI tools directly to teachers, and Anthropic says it can incorporate academic standards from all 50 states to help build lesson plans, personalize materials, and pull in a student's past assessment and assignment data. Drew Bent, Anthropic's education lead, said the tool is meant to close the gap between AI-generated plans and what teachers actually need to teach. Detroit Public Schools Community District, already using other Claude products, will pilot the teacher tool next school year to study its effect on educator practice and well-being. Anthropic is working with the American Federation of Teachers on privacy standards; AFT President Randi Weingarten endorsed the product in the company's release, though AFT is notably not doing the same work with Google, which struck its own statewide deal to bring Gemini to every K-12 school in Utah.
Anthropic says Claude for Teachers won't train its models on teacher conversations, will handle student data under federal student-privacy law, and wrote its terms of service without jargon. Take that as a claim to verify, not a fact to repeat to your department chair. Every company entering this market is making similar promises, and the difference between what a press release says and what a signed contract actually permits is exactly the gap a privacy officer, not a marketing page, is built to catch. Sixty-one percent of teachers reported using AI in some form last year, up from 32% the year before, according to Education Week. That adoption curve means your district will face this decision, if it hasn't already, regardless of which vendor wins.
Gov. Josh Green signed twelve education-related bills into law July 14 across two ceremonies. HB 1890 establishes annual salary step increases and longevity raises for teachers who have sat at the top pay step for at least three years, subject to collective bargaining and legislative appropriation. State Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said the state acted "after a decade of teachers fighting for salary step increases." Hawaii teachers are the lowest-paid in the country when adjusted for cost of living, and nearly half leave the profession or the state within five years of starting. The same session produced HB 1888, which protects educational workers, including sports officials, from harassment: it requires schools to investigate reported incidents, mandates that threats of physical harm be reported to law enforcement within 48 hours, and adds annual training on harassment response and de-escalation.
Hawaii bundled compensation reform and workplace-safety law into the same signing session rather than treating them as separate fights, and the retention numbers behind HB 1890 explain why: a state cannot fix a five-year attrition problem with a raise alone if the working conditions driving people out remain unaddressed. HB 1888's 48-hour reporting mandate is a specific, checkable standard, not a general commitment to safety, which is what makes it enforceable. If your state legislature is weighing either issue this fall, Hawaii just supplied a model for pairing them.
NPR's Lee V. Gaines interviewed seven teenagers across the country for the network's "Learning in the Age of AI" series, published July 14. Charles Ansevin, 15, of Gates Mills, Ohio, said ChatGPT is "like a friend" that lets him have "very meaningful, you know, intelligent discussions." Dorian Prado, 16, of Fort Worth, Texas, said he is "very against AI": "It makes it to where thinking is optional, and that should never be the case. You don't think, you don't learn. It's making us dumber." Tessa Klein, 18, a recent graduate from Oradell, New Jersey, said AI gave her useful feedback on essays and walked her through complex science concepts, calling it "this opportunity to have sort of like a private tutor that maybe other students cannot have or cannot afford." Dammie'on McColley, 18, of Indianapolis, worried less about his own learning than about jobs: "if we have a machinery that's taking over that, then what are they going to do?"
None of these four teenagers disagreed about what AI can do. They disagreed about what it threatens. Prado is afraid of losing the habit of thinking itself. McColley is afraid his community loses income to automation. Klein sees the same tool as an equity gain, an on-demand tutor she couldn't otherwise afford. That's a more useful map than "students like AI" or "students distrust AI." When a student in your class won't touch AI, or won't stop using it, the more productive question isn't whether, it's what they think is at stake for them personally.