A majority of educators say their districts have not made their artificial-intelligence policies clear to educators and to students, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey.
Sixty percent of educators said they “completely” or “somewhat” disagree that their district has made its policies about using AI products clear to them, according to the survey of 990 teachers, principals, and district administrators conducted in December. Sixty percent of educators also said the same about whether AI policies were clear to students.
This technology is “still very new,” said Pat Yongpradit, the chief academic officer at Code.org and a leader of TeachAI, an initiative to support schools in using and teaching about AI. “I don’t think there’s necessarily a lack of will at this point. If given the opportunity, time, and capacity, these districts would do something about it.”
Still, the lack of clarity about districts’ AI-use policies is one of the top reasons many educators have yet to experiment with the emerging technology. It has also led to confusion among teachers about how to handle student misuse of AI tools, according to educators.
“Many schools are hesitant to develop clear policies for AI usage,” said a high school tech coach in Virginia in the open-ended response section of the EdWeek Research Center survey. “There’s a fear of doing it ‘wrong’ or setting a precedent that may need to be revised later.
“This reluctance,” the tech coach continued, “leaves educators and students in a gray area, unsure of what’s acceptable. We need policies that balance ethical considerations, academic integrity, and innovation, but fear of missteps is holding progress back.”
A New Jersey middle school principal said, in the open-ended response to the survey, that “it’s really important that districts and schools provide thorough guidance and education on AI for educators and students.”
The technology “should be used to increase our effectiveness and efficiency as educators, which, in turn, will improve morale,” the principal said. “Students need to be well-educated on ethical use of AI and strengthen their digital literacy and media literacy skills.”
A middle school principal from California who responded to the EdWeek Research Center survey said her district has been experimenting with using various AI tools and hasn’t discouraged teachers from using the technology.
“We are on our way to having a full-blown policy,” said the principal, in a follow-up interview to the survey. (The principal did not want to be identified by name.)
The regional education service agency that serves her district has also started rolling out more information about AI, such as its benefits and what to be cautious about, she said.
The California principal said the lack of a clear-cut policy hasn’t led to confusion, pointing out that only a couple of teachers at her middle school are using AI frequently, but other than that, AI isn’t really a big topic of conversation because teachers have other priorities.
Schools and states grapple with role of AI in K-12 education
While AI has been around for decades, attention to it spiked following the release of ChatGPT in 2022, a generative AI tool that can produce human-like conversational responses to prompts. Since then, many educators have started using other AI tools, such as Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and the Khan Academy’s Khanmigo.
AI experts have touted generative AI’s potential to transform education, but skeptics are concerned about its tendency to fabricate responses and its potential effects on people’s cognitive skills.
Districts and state education agencies across the country have been grappling with how to leverage the rapidly evolving technology, but they don’t often have the expertise they need to figure it out.
It’s difficult to create policies if districts don’t know what they’re dealing with, Yongpradit said. First, there needs to be organization-wide learning about and exploration of the technology, he said.
Over time, the number of districts with clear AI policies “will naturally improve,” Yongpradit said.
