School districts across the country are rolling out AI policies to guide how teachers, staff, and students use the technology in response to growing interest and concern about its benefits and drawbacks.
But there remain many other school systems that have yet to grapple with AI use in a systematic way. Even among districts that have adopted a policy, experts say there’s no guarantee that it’s necessarily establishing meaningful guardrails for AI use.
The challenge, say educators, is that it’s hard to craft policy around such a fast-evolving technology.
So, how can schools give students and staff guidance while remaining flexible in this dynamic time? And what are some of the early lessons learned from districts that have AI policies?
Education Week spoke with district leaders, principals, and teachers to figure out what’s working so far, what’s not, and what front-line educators say they still need.
“I see a lot of policies that are just about students, but I think you have to also include your teachers, instructional staff, administrative staff, and your district staff,” said Tracey Metcalfe Rowley, the senior director of educational technology and online learning for the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona. “I think you have to come from the point of view that it’s already there. People are using it. So, let’s tell people how to use it responsibly and ethically.”
Why AI guidelines and rules are important
Having an AI policy is important for a number of reasons. First, it helps demystify AI, said Bree Dusseault, the principal and managing director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.
A policy gives clarity to teachers and students about when it’s appropriate to use AI in school. It communicates to parents about how their children are being exposed to the technology. And, Dusseault said, an AI policy also helps district leaders think through how the technology connects to the larger goals of their school system.
Districts can craft an official, board-approved AI policy, or something less formal and more flexible, said Dusseault, such as a framework or guidance for how to use the technology responsibly. She added that what matters is that leadership gives staff and students some sort of direction.
“Putting out communication that clarifies and puts guardrails and parameters in place for safe, responsible use helps school leaders know how to navigate, and helps teachers know how to navigate, questions around AI,” she said. “What it’s called, and the formality of it, is less important than the fact that there’s a need for resources to help drive how schools and classrooms respond and utilize AI.”
The problem is many educators say they’re still lacking that basic guidance. Nearly half of teachers, principals, and district leaders say their district or school does not have an AI policy, according to a survey conducted this summer by the EdWeek Research Center. Another 16% said the current policy does not establish meaningful guardrails about how to use the technology for instructional purposes.
States are not offering much more in the way of guidance, according to a separate survey of state education technology officials by the State Educational Technology Directors Association, or SETDA. Forty percent said their states had AI guidance. Only two states—Ohio and Tennessee—now require school districts to have comprehensive AI policies, according to Education Week’s AI policy tracker.
Feedback and flexibility help build durable AI policies
Whether it’s a policy, framework, or guidance, it’s important that districts solicit input from a broad range of people in their school community when developing them, said Rowley.
That includes people working in human resources, communications, transportation, and school nutrition, said Rowley. Two years ago, Rowley formed a task force made up of more than 40 people—basically anyone who wanted to join could be part of the group—to create AI guidelines, that then formed the basis of her district’s AI policy.
“AI is impacting everybody,” she said. “We had a lot of people who worked for the district who were also parents, so they brought that perspective in. We had teachers, we had community members. I just think by having a lot of voices at the table meant that what we’ve ultimately produced is really good.”
It’s also crucial that AI guidance is flexible.
That’s why Arlington Public Schools in Virginia hasn’t adopted a formal AI policy, and is relying instead on something more of a framework, said Jacqueline Firster, the supervisor of digital learning and innovation for the district.
Firster describes the framework as a living document on the district’s website that can be easily updated. An AI steering committee collects feedback from parents and staff and meets at least every other week to review the input and update the framework on the website as needed.
Updates don’t have to go through any additional approval, and several employees are deputized to make changes to the website, Firster said.
“It can happen very quickly, immediately really, because there’s several people who can edit that guidance online,” she said.
The guidance is organized into sections on teaching and learning, equity, and privacy and security, to name a few. This process “allows us to quickly change the message and be flexible as things evolve,” Firster said. “If there’s something new that develops next week, we can add that in to our guidance.”
Another benefit of this approach, Firster has found, is that it’s highly transparent. Everyone from parents to vendors can go to the district’s website and see the same information the teachers get regarding the district’s goals for AI and how staff can use it.
The Arlington district also has a rigorous process for vetting AI tools and strict rules around which ones employees are allowed to use, said Firster, which helps provide further guardrails for AI use.
Additional guidelines for AI use have been embedded in other resources such as the district’s acceptable use policy for students’ technology use. The district has provided high school teachers with standard language on AI to include in their syllabi, said Firster.
Even if a district adopts a formal, board-approved policy, it’s still important for there to be flexibility built into it, said Rowley.
Her district has achieved that in a couple of ways. First, the policy must be updated and voted on by the school board annually. Second, the district also puts out guidelines separate from the policy that are more detailed and easily updated.
Rowley describes the policy as succinct and focused on responsible and ethical AI use for students, parents, and staff. The guidelines, meanwhile, focus on more details around teacher and student usage, discussing topics such as grading with AI and updating syllabi to include information on how, if at all, students can use AI. At this juncture, only high school students are allowed to use AI in Tucson schools.
AI guidelines should be paired with professional development
Developing AI policies and purchasing AI-powered products is meaningless if students and district employees—from the IT department staff to the teachers—don’t know how to incorporate the technology into their work, said Rowley.
Tucson schools offers basic professional development courses for employees just starting to get their feet wet with the technology, as well as more in-depth or specialized training for specific positions.
Arlington public schools offered training for teachers who wanted it last year, but this year they are making a basic AI training course mandatory, with optional courses for teachers and staff members who want to take a deeper dive.
Combined with guidelines, training is important to ensure that teachers and staff members are not only leveraging the technology to improve their jobs, but also to make sure that they aren’t accidentally doing something wrong or even illegal, such as pasting identifiable student information into a generative AI chatbot, Rowley said. Thoroughly vetting AI tools before approving them for staff use also helps cut down on data privacy risks, said Firster.
An AI policy—or guidance—should define appropriate AI use for students, specifically what kind of use crosses into plagiarism or cheating, said Dusseault, from the Center for Reinventing Public Education. It should outline steps for protecting student data privacy, parameters for choosing AI-enabled tools for district and classroom use, and warning language around AI bias. A policy is also a good place to outline AI literacy standards for students, said Dusseault.
What teachers and principals say they need from an AI policy
Many teachers recognize that AI use is expanding in education and say they have integrated it into their lessons.
Some are using AI to brainstorm content ideas, craft emails, and create grading rubrics, but many don’t have a school or districtwide policy to follow.
Al Rabanera, a math teacher at La Vista High School in Fullerton, Calif., said he has had AI guidance from Fullerton Joint Union High School District since February 2024. A document addressed to staff defined responsible use and described what prohibited use of AI looks like. It also touched on special considerations for advancing academic integrity, safety, security, and privacy, he said.
Rabenera said his school is proactive in soliciting teacher input on AI use, and that’s something he said district AI policies should do.
“Where’s the teacher feedback and how are we able to help guide what gets put in?” he said. “I believe teachers know what’s best because they’re in front of the kids.”
Rabanera is concerned that school district AI policies might reflect tech company priorities more than educators’ needs if teachers aren’t consulted.
He wants future AI policy to be more specific for each content area, such as how AI can be used in math versus English language arts class.
Other factors that Rabanera hopes to see addressed in future AI policy are establishing consistency in terms of use across classrooms, equity for students who might not have access to AI outside of school, and what teacher training for the tool could look like.
Sonerka Mouton, a middle school principal at Kerrville Independent School District in Texas, said her school’s approach to adopting AI is just getting started.
There are no specific policies for AI use in the district or Mouton’s school, but teachers did get professional development for it and are encouraged to test it out.
“We’re just embarking on AI, we’re very, very late to it,” said Mouton. “AI is not new, but it’s still fairly new, especially to educators, and we want to use it the right way and then with fidelity as well.”
