The lack of federal regulation and guidance for how schools and other organizations should use AI is raising concerns, according to testimony during a committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The Education and Workforce Committee hearing comes in the wake of President Donald Trump and his administration pushing the idea that the use of artificial intelligence in education and other sectors needs to be unleashed, with minimal regulation, to help fuel innovation.
But a lack of regulation or guardrails could lead to problems down the road, according to people who testified at the hearing.
“The problem is that we do not yet have shared standards and safe, purpose-built tools as the default for classrooms,” Adeel Khan, the founder and CEO of Magic School AI, an ed-tech company, told the committee. “Without clear guardrails [and] responsibility fragments, districts [will] struggle to protect students and learn what works.”
The use of AI in education has been largely supported by the Trump administration. In April of last year, Trump signed an executive order calling for more infusion of AI into education, including training teachers on how to integrate AI more into their instruction and workflows. Then, in September, first lady Melania Trump announced the “Presidential AI Challenge,” inviting K-12 students and educators to a nationwide competition where they “solve real-world problems in their communities using AI-powered solutions.”
In December, Trump signed another executive order blocking states from creating regulations for AI. The Department of Education has also announced its prioritization of AI in education when it allowed discretionary grant funding to go to people or organizations to expand the understanding and use of AI.
These actions happened as an increasing number of school districts began rolling out their own AI policies and guidance. As it is, only two states—Ohio and Tennessee—require school districts to have a comprehensive policy on AI, according to an Education Week tracker.
One challenge school districts are facing as they craft policies and guidance is determining how to provide meaningful professional development about the use of AI in teaching and learning, and the management of schools.
Eighty-five percent of teachers and 86% of students used AI at some level during the 2024-25 school year, according to a study by the Center for Democracy and Technology. But only 50% of teachers reported having received at least one professional development session or more on how to use AI in their work, according to a 2025 EdWeek Research Center survey.
To make “good” on the promise of AI, training for teachers is a critical part, Alexandra Reeve Givens, president and CEO of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, told the committee. “It is about how to use these tools and how we can help them in the classroom, but it is also necessary to underscore what potential risks can be.”
School districts need to ask the right questions about AI
Some of the concerns about AI in education include the potential effect on students’ ability to think critically, student-teacher relationships and peer-to-peer connections, as well as the possibility to fuel bullying, according to previous Education Week reporting.
One way to mitigate these risks is to have districts ask the right questions when considering AI-generated products, said Khan. For example, asking ed-tech companies:
- How do you protect student data?
- How do you evaluate your platform for things like bias, safety, and sharing?
- What guardrails are put in place to ensure student safety?
- How do you ensure that the tool is being used primarily for classroom purposes?
During the committee hearing, experts discussed the importance of establishing accountability even without federal regulation and guidance. For example, Reeve Givens said a Center for Democracy and Technology survey found that 12% of students knew of nonconsensual, intimate AI-generated imagery depicting someone in their school community. While educators can discipline the actions of students, the responsibility also falls on companies too, she said.
“Oftentimes, it is already a violation of the terms of service for that to happen, but we see that companies are not rigorously enforcing those terms,” said Reeve Givens. “They should be creating a safe community for their users and living up to the promises they’re telling their users about what they do.”
OpenAI released training for teachers to get certified in foundational AI skills and have plans to provide similar AI training for students, Chaya Nayak, head of jobs and certification at OpenAI, told Education Week. “We really are focused on making sure that youth can use our tools in good ways and prevent bad [ones],” she said.
“So we have parental controls, and we are working to make sure that students are leveraging our tools for positive uses,” she said.
