For lawmakers & committee staff
Draw the line in the right place.
The companion chatbot laws now in force in California, New York, and a dozen states prove that legislatures can define a machine by its design. We ask you to do it once more, in the other direction — and we have drafted the language for you.
A rule that reaches “AI” reaches the ramp along with the trap. Assistive cognitive tools — AI systems that supply no answers, adopt no persona, retain no relationship, and conclude when the student’s task advances — are the design opposite of the systems your bill targets, and for students with disabilities they can function as assistive technology under 20 U.S.C. § 1401(1). Without a definitional carve-out, safety law becomes the instrument of a new exclusion; with one, it protects children on both sides of the line.
Five-part design definition, conditional self-revoking exclusion, assistive technology preservation (20 U.S.C. § 1401(1); § 504), safety duties preserved — with drafter’s notes keyed to Cal. SB 243 and N.Y. GBL art. 47.
Download (PDF)Two machines, one name; the double exclusion in safety law; why design tests outlast age gates.
Download (PDF)Where America stands against the world, what peer nations mandate, and the zero-state literacy gap.
Download (PDF)Public dollars require cognitive access. As states expand ESAs, vouchers, and tax-credit scholarships, one condition makes the promise to students with disabilities real: schools that take public money provide zero-cost access accommodations — read-aloud, extended time, speech-to-text, assistive technology — wherever they do not alter the skill an assessment measures. The model condition is a single sentence, drafted and free.
The scale, the zero-cost reality, the one-sentence model condition, and why both sides can vote for it.
Download (PDF)The principle behind the condition: any school required to ramp its doorway must ramp its tests. Includes the Model Cognitive Access Policy.
Download (PDF)The carve-out is conditional and self-revoking: a product holds it only while its design holds, and it leaves AI-disclosure and crisis-referral duties fully intact. It weakens no safety requirement. It aims the bill.
The Center provides testimony, comment letters, and technical review of definitional language to any legislature or agency, without charge. If your state is among the twenty-five with companion chatbot legislation pending, we would welcome the conversation before the definitions are set — that is when one sentence protects the most children.