State and school district leaders need to press for guardrails on AI use in schools, while also acknowledging that the technology’s rapid development makes teacher training critical, witnesses at a U.S. Senate hearing said Tuesday.
The hearing—organized by the Senate Subcommittee on Education & the American Family—examined the adjustments policymakers need to make to help schools design effective teaching and learning in the age of AI.
“AI can expand opportunity while preserving what matters most about education—human relationships and human judgment,” said Cynthia Marten, the Delaware secretary of education and a witness at the hearing. Marten previously served as a deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education during the Biden administration.
This can be done “when we keep students at the center, lead with strong guardrails and shared responsibility, and judge AI by outcomes rather than hype,” she said.
The hearing comes at a time when optimistic visions of the technology’s potential are colliding with broad anxieties about its effect on teaching and learning, and uncertainty about when students should be kept from it, or encouraged to use it.
On the optimistic side, President Donald Trump issued an executive order a year ago that aims to integrate artificial intelligence across K-12 education, with potentially significant ramifications for schools.
On the pessimistic side, many experts and educators are worried AI will hurt students’ abilities to think for themselves and engage in deep learning. They are also worried that on a practical level, the technology will fuel a higher level of cheating, as students turn to increasingly powerful platforms for writing and other academic support.
There is currently no federal policy that addresses guardrails for how schools should use AI, but some states and many districts have put those measures in place.
At least seven states have enacted a policy on AI, according to an Education Week tracker. And last year, 21 state lawmakers proposed more than 50 bills during the 2025 legislative session on AI in education, according to a report by the Center for Democracy and Technology.
One example of a state-level initiative on AI mentioned in the hearing was Delaware’s AI Assurance Lab. The program evaluates AI tools with the goal of helping district and local school leaders make decisions on how they want to implement the technology in classrooms.
Part of the review process includes teachers giving their input on products and platforms and whether they are safe for students, and how much they are improving student learning.
"[AI] is a shiny new toy; you have to test the vendor claims,” said Marten. “Let’s have our teachers actually test the tools with students and the curriculum that they’re teaching. They will tell you if learning is enhanced.”
What can Congress do? Support AI training for teachers, witnesses said
At this moment in time, what is needed most is financial support for teachers to learn how to use these tools to enhance instruction, said Erin Mote, CEO of InnovateEDU, a New York City-based company, who was a witness at the hearing. Congress could provide a meaningful role in providing that financial support, she said.
“More than half of schools have failed to provide any professional development on the safe use of AI,” said Mote. “Our schools urgently need federal leadership, structured support, and dedicated funding.”
Teacher barriers to AI adoption include a lack of professional development and a lack of clear policies on the appropriate use of the technology, according to educators and experts.
While support for teachers has been slow coming, there are signs of progress. As of March, 58% of teachers reported receiving at least one professional development session on using AI in their work, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey. That’s nearly double the percentage who reported getting that training in a survey conducted from January to March 2024.
Additionally, in May of this year, the Computer Science Teachers Association launched a multi-state, two-year initiative to have K-12 schools teach foundational computer science and AI skills. The $11 million project is funded by the National Science Foundation as part of Trump’s executive order “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth.”
Joshua Jones, CEO of QuantHub, a Birmingham, Ala.-based company that created an ed-tech tool that helps schools and universities adapt curricula to include AI and provides AI literacy education, said during the hearing that the rapid evolution of AI is another reason professional development for teachers is necessary.
The rapid development of the technology makes it increasingly difficult to create curriculum resources that includes AI features and do not become obsolete in a matter of months.
When “thinking about funding from teacher training all the way down to the students, [Congress] has to realize that [the pace of change] is something that we’ve never seen before, and it’s going to continue to increase,” he said.
Establishing meaningful guardrails and increasing the use of AI in schools can’t be done without effective teacher training, Marten said.
“The tool is no good if the person using the tool does not know how to use it,” she said.
