A new survey finds a lack of clear direction and guidance from school leaders and policymakers on how teachers can responsibly and effectively integrate artificial intelligence technologies in their work.
An overwhelming majority of teachers (82%) said they have not received formal guidance on how they should apply AI tools to their work, across multiple types of work tasks, according to a nationally representative Gallup/Walton Family Foundation survey of 2,069 teachers conducted in February and March.
A little more than half of teachers (52%) said they have received informal guidance only, while about a third of teachers (34%) have received no guidance at all, the survey found.
The findings come even as teachers’ adoption of AI tools has increased over the past three years and as more districts and education organizations invest in AI tools and training for teachers. As of July 2025, 61% of teachers said they were using AI tools at least a little, compared with 34% in December 2023, according to EdWeek Research Center data.
Joseph South, the chief innovation officer for ISTE+ASCD, a technology and curriculum professional development organization, said he’s not surprised that many teachers don’t have any formal guidance yet.
AI is often not at the top of the to-do list for educators, he said. Districts and schools are also dealing with many other pressures and priorities: getting academic achievement back on track, responding to students’ mental health challenges, and dealing with staffing shortages.
“One of the issues is that [AI] is not something that you learned about in your education, wasn’t part of your master’s degree, wasn’t part of your training,” South said. “So for you to feel comfortable providing guidance on it, you want to feel like you understand it.
“The administrators we talked to really feel like they don’t have a lot of time to figure it out,” South said.
While he understands why many schools and districts haven’t provided guidance yet, it is a problem, South said.
Lack of guidance on AI use in schools hinders experimentation
The lack of guidance, whether it’s from school or district leaders or the state education department, is hindering some teachers from experimenting with AI, because they don’t know what’s acceptable and what’s not, said Ray Yanek, an English teacher at Streator Township High School in Streator, Ill.
Teachers have received less guidance on using AI for some tasks than for others, the Gallup/Walton Foundation Family survey found. For instance, 58% have not received guidance on how to use AI for grading and providing feedback, and 69% said the same about applying AI in settings with one‑on‑one instruction or tutoring. (The Walton Family Foundation underwrites coverage in Education Week of how schools are providing a wider range of options for how students can learn. The media organization retains sole editorial control over the content in its articles.)
For teachers who do receive guidance, the vast majority of it is informal, the survey found. For many teachers, decisions about if, when, and how to use AI are happening individually, in the absence of clear institutional expectations, the survey found.
“What’s happening is that [the technology] moves so fast, so quickly, that unless we start to get that guidance, we, as the teachers, are going to be so far behind that 8-ball,” Yanek said. “It’s going to be hard to get caught up.”
Streator Township High School doesn’t have any formal guidance, but it is something teachers are looking for, because some “feel a little bit lost,” said Nick McGurk, an assistant principal for the school. While there are a few teachers, like Yanek, experimenting with AI and going to different professional development opportunities, others are waiting for more direction.
School leaders, however, don’t want to have “knee-jerk” reactions, he said. They want to “make sure we have all the information from the people who are supposed to give us guidance before we dictate a policy.”
At least seven states have laws requiring school districts to develop AI use policies, according to an Education Week analysis. Most state education departments (36 including Puerto Rico’s), have put out documents with guidance and best practices for using AI in K-12 settings, according to experts who’ve been tracking it for a couple years. So far, Illinois is not among those states.
McGurk and other Streator Township district leaders are “waiting for the state board in Illinois, and potentially some federal guidance, on how it should be used,” he said. “We’re better off waiting until we get some guidance, as opposed to diving into a full policy and then having to reinvent the wheel.”
State AI policies help determine more easily what’s acceptable use and what’s not
In Louisiana, where the state education department put out AI guidance in August 2024, it’s easier for school leaders and teachers to determine what’s acceptable use and what’s not, said Justin Wax, the principal for Denham Springs Junior High in Denham Springs, La.
“Oftentimes people may be against regulations that tell what they can and cannot do, but when there are clear structures in place to say what is an acceptable use or what are appropriate practices, it liberates the user instead of restricts them,” Wax said. Educators can quickly analyze whether something falls into the acceptable-use category and know they don’t have to ask for permission.
“The decision [becomes] whether I want to use this, not whether I can,” Wax added.
Still, guidance from state education agencies isn’t always enough, South said, because those guidelines tend to be too broad, or they might be aimed at policy-level issues rather than practice-level ones. There often needs to be some kind of translation that district leaders need to do for their staff.
Even without guidance from state education agencies, however, school and district leaders should still create some guidelines, South said. These guidelines should, at minimum, focus on using AI in safe, secure, and private ways; encourage hands-on educator exploration of the tools; and develop usage policies that are created with input from educators and students.
