Free is the entry price

Anthropic launched Claude for Teachers in July, free for verified US educators. OpenAI has had ChatGPT for Teachers since November, Google is building Gemini into its education products, and Microsoft brought Elevate for Educators to Australia in April. Free for teachers is now simply the entry price, which tells you what's actually being bought.

Whichever lab becomes the default in teacher workflow becomes the default in the school, and then in the procurement cycle. That's the edtech playbook of the last twenty years running again, only bigger.

I don't think it's sinister, just predictable, and schools should negotiate like customers rather than say thank you.

Worth noting too that Claude for Teachers is adults only, so all this free access solves lesson planning while not touching the actual hard question, which is what an eight year old should be allowed to do with these tools, and on whose servers.