Districts getting ahead on AI are creating guidance for users and offering professional development, among other initiatives. Here are some more lessons you can take away from the forefront of AI education.
District leaders are embracing edtech innovations as rapidly as they evolve. A database created by researchers at the Center on Reinventing Public Education reveals several realities regarding how districts are using and piloting AI.
Guidance is not widespread
About two-thirds of the 41 districts sampled by the Center have, or are in the process of, developing AI guidance or frameworks.
California’s Torrance Unified School District, for example, updated its Annual Rights and Responsibilities to include provisions on AI. The plan was developed by the district’s edtech team in conjunction with its AI committee, a coalition of teachers, administrators and technology specialists.
Notably, the guidelines were developed based on survey data from teachers and students. Torrance USD also partnered with 25 teachers to pilot SchoolAI in their classrooms.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina updated its Behavior Violations Matrix to include AI’s role in academic dishonesty. Schools throughout the district have also hosted AI professional development sessions.
Student support
Several districts are piloting initiatives to improve academic performance and social-emotional well-being with AI-enabled tools.
In the 2023-24 school year, New Jersey’s Newark Public Schools piloted Khanmigo, an AI-powered teaching assistant, in one school serving students in grades 5-8. Last year, the district expanded its use to 14 schools in Newark’s North Ward in grades 3-8.
The district is also using AI to improve school security. The district will be installing more than 7,000 AI cameras that monitor schools for violence and gun activity.
Texas’s Mesquite Independent School District has co-developed the AI-enabled program “AYO” in partnership with Google and SoftServe. The program identifies students’ passions and strengths by integrating each learner’s interests with test scores, grades, attendance and extracurricular data.
Teachers use the data to design individualized learning plans that emphasize students’ unique goals. Well-being data is collected daily to alert counselors and parents when a student needs mental health or social-emotional care.
Operational support
One last takeaway is how districts are leveraging AI to work more efficiently. The Llano Independent School District in Texas developed Agnes, a customized chatbot designed to streamline teachers’ administrative tasks.
Agnes can answer questions about minimizing stress outside of classroom obligations, including how policies and procedures vary across school campuses.
Meanwhile, Kentucky’s Bullitt County Public Schools has partnered with InkWire, an AI-powered tool that generates assessments related to the district’s Graduate Profile. The district also uses Stopfinder, an AI-assisted school bus tracking system.
In California, the Anaheim Union High School District uses the LMS platform eKadence, which streamlines lesson planning and analysis for teachers. It also provides personalized learning and AI tutoring for students while optimizing data analysis and communication for administrators.
In spring 2024, leaders also piloted Scrappy, a chatbot and virtual tutor built into eKadence.
Click here to browse the database.
More from DA: MTSS in action: How to build coherent systems of support
