Opportunities and Risks in With AI Use in Schools

Educators see potential benefits and risks related to the use of generative AI in schools, the Consortium for School Networking “2024 State of EdTech District Leadership” report says. But few districts have developed a formal policy regarding generative AI so far.

The majority of the ed tech leaders surveyed (97 percent) said AI can make a positive impact on education, and more than a third (35 percent) of districts have established a generative AI initiative.

Respondents believe that the areas with the greatest potential for AI to have a positive impact are:

• Productivity (43 percent), and
• Personalized education (30 percent).

Almost two-thirds (63 percent) cited concerns about AI-enabled cyberattacks and cyberbullying, however, and nearly half (49 percent) said that there’s a lack of teacher training for integrating AI into instruction.

Cyberbullying (47 percent), false information (45 percent), and threats to student data privacy (45 percent) rounded out leaders’ top concerns.

A fifth (20 percent) of respondents work in districts that use tools to detect AI-generated answers in student work. Almost twice that percentage (38 percent) said their districts are exploring options in detection, and a third (34 percent) said they don’t use detection tools.

When asked about teachers using generative AI to boost productivity on tasks such as preparing assessments and developing lesson plans, 21 percent said they “always allow” such use, 22 percent of districts “usually allow” it, and 28 percent said that their district doesn’t prohibit such use but also doesn’t encourage it.

Few Teachers Use AI in Classrooms, RAND Says

Along these same lines as the CoSN report, a new report from RAND Corp. says that only 18 percent of K–12 teachers had used AI for teaching by the end of the 2023–2024 school year. Only 15 percent of respondents had tried AI at least once, with middle and high school teachers in English language arts and social studies most likely to be AI users.

Combining results from its American Teacher Panel and American School District Panel, “Using Artificial Intelligence Tools in K–12 Classrooms” asked teachers about their AI use and asked district leaders what policies, guidance, and training they provide to teachers and students.

Key findings include:

• 18 percent of K–12 teachers used AI for teaching, and 15 percent have tried AI at least once.
• The most common ways teachers used AI were to adapt instructional content to fit student needs and to generate learning materials.
• Among the teachers using AI for teaching, most used virtual learning platforms, adaptive learning systems, and chatbots on a weekly basis.
• 60 percent of districts planned to train teachers in AI use by the end of the 2023–2024 school year.
• 28 percent of the teachers who hadn’t used AI so far expected to use AI tools more in the future.

District interviewees were more concerned about helping teachers adopt AI successfully than limiting its use among students, seeing a potential to make staff jobs easier. Of 11 district leaders interviewed, six were in the process of developing a policy on generative AI for their districts, but none were working on policies that would ban student or teacher use of AI.