Teachers don’t want to use artificial intelligence to personalize instruction—yet. Instead, teachers want AI to buy them the time to personalize instruction themselves.
The disconnect stems from a lingering distrust of AI that dates back to the pandemic. Nearly every edtech platform was integrating AI, and districts had more funds than ever to purchase these tools. Many would argue it was a trial-and-error period.
In 2026, widespread budget constraints limit leaders’ purchasing power, putting pressure on edtech companies to deliver on their promise of supporting AI-powered, tailored instruction.
To make matters more complex, 52% of teachers in a June NPR/Ipsos poll still haven’t received guidance from their districts. Meanwhile, 74% of teachers believe AI will have bigger implications on K12 education than past technological changes.
This lack of trust among educators is evident in Missouri’s Ladue School District, said Dr. Patricia Brown, director of technology services, during a panel at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. The reason: teachers don’t want AI in the driver’s seat of the classroom.
In an interview with District Administration, she says educators will only trust a tool that their district has taken the time to introduce to them. “Teachers are going to trust a tool that they understand, that they use, that they’ve been trained on, that has research that backs it up,” Brown says.
More importantly, teachers must find value in the product. “If it takes something off my plate and helps me be more efficient, that’s a win,” she says.
For the Ladue School District, the process for evaluating AI tools mirrors that of any other edtech product. Data privacy remains the top priority, according to Brown. Specific to AI, the question leaders like Brown are asking is, “What is the problem we’re trying to solve?”
“It’s not just using a tool for the sake of it,” she adds. “It has to actually be in alignment with what we want to accomplish.”
More from DA: Superintendent shares ‘a pivotal moment’ when his idea flopped
How AI literacy can help
Showing teachers “what’s under the hood” is part of Nicole Bond’s AI literacy strategy for teachers. Bond, who serves as the supervisor of educational technology services at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12, a regional educational service agency, told District Administration that educators’ confidence in AI varies across the board.
“You’ve got your early adopters. They’ve been on board since ChatGPT rolled out,” she says. But those opposing AI cite ethical considerations, including its environmental impact and copyright infringement.
However, in the past year, Bond has witnessed a surge in the number of teachers collaborating to learn AI.
“By word of mouth, naturally through networking, it’s been growing a lot more than I would see even from the professional learning aspect,” she says. “I think you need the professional learning around AI literacy, but if you really get into the productivity, you probably have some early adopters who could share the cool things they’re doing.”
During her presentation at ISTE, Bond shared how leaders can avoid what she calls “checking in the box,” an approach districts inadvertently take when designing professional learning.
Districts often treat topics like digital citizenship or AI literacy as isolated tasks rather than integrated skills. This includes purchasing a curriculum where every teacher is assigned a standard lesson to teach, regardless of their subject or grade level.
Or, important topics, like STEM, are restricted to a single area, which prevents other students from understanding how the technology impacts every field of study. This is especially true for AI.
“It’s [AI] a lesson all the time in all of our content areas because it’s in everything now,” Bond says. “I know very few people, even folks doing things like carpentry, who aren’t using some level of AI to analyze the work they’re doing or to help them with what they’re doing.”
