K-12 Education
Generative AI has introduced both exciting opportunities and complex challenges for K-12 education. While many schools and systems are responding to immediate questions about ethics, implementation, and student use, these efforts are often fragmented and reactive. The field needs more than one-off guidance. It requires shared vision and coordinated action to leverage AI as a tool for long-term reimagination.
At the same time, leaders at all levels are navigating real tensions: How do we balance innovation with safeguards? How do we align AI tools with instructional goals, not just operational tasks? How do we support teachers while preparing students for an AI-powered future?
This moment is about more than managing risk: it’s about designing toward possibility. We can lay the foundation for a more student-centered and future-ready education system by addressing urgent questions today with an eye towards the future.
The resources below help education leaders move from fragmented responses to a coherent strategy for integrating AI in education, particularly at the local and state levels. Together, they offer guiding principles, actionable tools, and policy recommendations to ensure AI supports powerful teaching, meaningful learning, and expanded opportunity for all students.
From Urgent to Future: Charting a Course for AI in K-12 Education
This white paper sets a vision for shifting the field from reactive decisions about AI toward proactive, student-centered systems change. Grounded in the realities of today’s classrooms and emerging insights from national research, it offers a path forward that centers instructional quality and human relationships as the foundation for responsible AI integration.
Starting Smart with AI: A Quick Guide for State Education Agency Leaders
This brief highlights the critical role state education agencies can play in supporting foundational AI integration across districts. It provides specific questions and vetted tools to help SEAs assess local needs, identify gaps, and coordinate meaningful support.
Starting Smart with AI: A Quick Guide for Local Education Agency Leaders
Designed for district and school leaders, this brief outlines key questions and resources to guide responsible AI implementation at the local level. From setting vision to supporting teacher practice, it equips LEAs to act with clarity, confidence, and care.
Charting a Course for AI in K-12 Education: Recommendations for Coordinated Action
These recommendations outline a set of coordinated actions to help the education sector move from fragmented responses toward the student-centered future envisioned in the white paper. Developed through research and engagement with field leaders, they offer actionable steps for state and local education agencies, researchers, and funders to align efforts, address foundational needs, and make good on the opportunities AI presents to transform teaching and learning.
Mapping the Field: A National Scan of AI Policy and Guidance
This landscape scan synthesizes AI-related policy and guidance efforts across states and districts to illuminate how the K-12 sector responds to generative AI’s rise. The report identifies key trends, gaps, and emerging priorities from public documents and field interviews. It serves as a grounding resource for leaders seeking to understand the current policy environment and inform strategic planning for AI integration in education.
By putting these insights and recommendations into action, education leaders can move beyond reactive responses to AI and begin shaping its role in service of powerful teaching and learning. Through thoughtful design, aligned policy, and a shared vision, we can create systems that reflect the realities of today’s classrooms, elevate educator and student agency, and unlock meaningful, equitable opportunities for every learner.