Oklahoma’s AI opt-out probably does not cover a tool like ClassLens. Its other rules do. We built the opt-out anyway.

A parent emails you: please do not run my child's work through AI. Until this week the only honest answer ClassLens had was that you would have to remember, by hand, on every grading run, for the rest of the year. Nobody keeps that up. So we built the setting, and then went and read what the law actually requires, which was not what we had assumed.

What Oklahoma's law actually says

It is worth quoting rather than summarizing, because two vendor write-ups we read first got the interesting part wrong by leaving out a definition.

The opt-out itself, subsection G:

"The parent or legal guardian of a student enrolled in a school district may provide written notice opting the student out of participating in student-facing AI tools at any time. Students who opt out shall not be academically penalized or denied access to core instructional content."

Now the definition that decides who that covers, subsection C.4 (italics ours):

"‘Student-facing AI tool’ means an artificial intelligence tool designed for use by students that provides AI-generated content, feedback, or assistance as part of an instructional activity"

ClassLens is not designed for use by students. Students never log in and never see it. On a plain reading, subsection G does not reach us. There is a real argument the other way, and we are not going to pretend otherwise: the feedback ClassLens drafts does end up in front of the student once their teacher releases it, and that definition does say "feedback." Reasonable people can read this either way. Your district's counsel gets to decide, not your software vendor.

The parts of that law that do land on a tool like ours

Less discussed, and the ones with teeth. Subsection E, paragraphs 1, 2 and 3, quoted as written:

"All classroom AI tools shall be deployed through educator-directed AI use. The responsibility for decisions informed by artificial intelligence shall remain with school employees and shall not be delegated to an artificial intelligence system or vendor."

"Classroom AI tools and student-facing AI tools shall operate with a human-in-the-loop. Outputs generated by artificial intelligence shall be reviewed by an educator or authorized school employee prior to use in instruction, feedback, assessment, or decision-making."

"Artificial intelligence tools shall not be used as the primary basis for student grading, discipline, placement, promotion, retention, or other high-stakes educational decisions."

One more paragraph in that subsection is written at the software itself rather than at the district: paragraph 5 requires AI tools to comply with FERPA and to "meet recognized industry standards or otherwise stringent private audit and security standards." Its second sentence, and all of paragraph 6, are district duties rather than vendor ones. Districts must minimize the student data they share, and must "address transparency regarding the instructional use of artificial intelligence including communication to students and families regarding the role and limitations of such tools." We mention both because they are what a district will come and ask a vendor for, even though the obligation is the district's. Our answer to the first is our SOC 2 Type 1 report and security page; our answer to the second is this post.

A "classroom AI tool" is defined broadly enough to include educator workflows and assessment assistance, so ClassLens is squarely one. Those three requirements describe how ClassLens already worked before any of this was written. You approve the rubric before anything is scored, the scores come back as drafts, and nothing reaches a student until you release it yourself. There is no setting that skips you.

That is not us being clever about a new law. The product has always worked that way because we gather context and you make the call. The opt-out adds one more guarantee on top of that arrangement.

Europe, briefly, and one date worth correcting

The EU AI Act lists AI systems "intended to be used to evaluate learning outcomes" as high risk. That is Annex III, point 3(b), and grading software is exactly what it describes.

Those obligations were widely expected on 2 August 2026. They were deferred by the Digital Omnibus, and the European Commission's own implementation timeline now shows the Annex III high-risk rules applying 2 December 2027. If you read somewhere that they are in force today, that was true of an older schedule.

There is also a carve-out we are not going to lean on. Article 6(3)(d) says an Annex III system is not high risk where it is "intended to perform a preparatory task to an assessment." Drafting a score a teacher then reviews and releases is arguably exactly that. We mention it because leaving it out would be its own kind of spin, and then we build as though it does not apply, because the classification is not ours to declare.

Separately, GDPR Article 22(1) gives a person "the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing … which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her." That word "solely" is the entire question for a tool with a teacher in the middle of it. We are not going to tell you how it resolves for your school.

What we actually built

A card called Student opt-outs on your grading settings page. Pick a course, tick the students, save. That is the whole interaction, and you do it once rather than on every assignment.

• Nothing is sent. Opted-out students are filtered out before their files are fetched from Drive, before anything reaches the model, and before the job is priced.
• You are not billed for them. The exclusion happens ahead of the credit count, so an opted-out student costs you nothing.
• It fails closed. If we cannot read the opt-out list, the grading job refuses to run rather than guessing.
• You still see them. Excluded students are counted on the job card and on the review page, with the reason, and named individually on the export sheet when you export to Sheets, so a missing grade is never a silent one. The count is kept separate from the skipped totals on purpose: a student you deliberately excluded is not the same event as one whose file could not be graded, and folding them together would hide both.

What it does not do

A privacy control you misunderstand is worse than none at all.

• It is set by you, not by the parent. There is no parent login. A family makes the request to the school the way they always have, and you record it here.
• It is per course, and courses roll. When Google Classroom issues a new course for a new term, the opt-out does not follow, and it does not follow a student who moves from your second period to your fourth. You set it again, per course.
• It is one of several reasons a student may get no AI-drafted grade. Clearing an opt-out does not guarantee a grade. Empty submissions, unsupported files and late-work policy all still apply.
• It stores something. To remember the setting we keep the opaque Google Classroom identifier for that student and the class it applies to, together with who set it and when, and nothing else about that student. No name, no email, ever. You can remove it yourself at any time in grading settings, and otherwise an automated monthly purge removes it once it has gone unused for 24 months. Setting it, re-saving it, or a grading job honouring it all count as use. We keep it only because you asked us to remember something on a child's behalf. Section 7 of our privacy policy lists it, and every other record that outlives a grading job.

Why build it if it probably is not required

Because the alternative was never really available. Without a setting, a parent's request leaves you two options: remember it on every grading run for the rest of the year, or hand-grade the whole class so that one student is left out. Late in the year, with a backlog, neither one happens reliably. And when it does not, the family never learns.

This feature adds no grading signal at all. It removes the effort of remembering an obligation, which is the other half of the only test we apply to new work. A teacher should be able to honour a family's request once and stop carrying it.

And whatever your state does next, being able to say exactly which students were excluded, and that their work was never sent anywhere, is a better position than a policy document promising it.

None of this is legal advice

We are a small company that read the statutes carefully and quoted them rather than paraphrasing. Oklahoma's language above is from the enrolled text of SB 1734, not from a summary of it. Under that law the duties run to the school district, including an annual disclosure to families naming each AI vendor, the categories of student data collected, how far it is shared, and the educational purpose. If you need that from us, Section 7 of our privacy policy is written to be handed to a district administrator without translation. For what your obligations actually are, ask your district.