EdGate has been watching states as they continue to publish AI Guidance and Frameworks to help school district leaders navigate AI in the K-12 classroom. The guidance encourages teachers to support AI and use it to enhance learning and their own productivity in the classroom. Several states frame their guidance with forethought as to how AI will shape future workforces.
Back in October 2023 just two states—California and Oregon—offered official guidance to school districts on using AI in schools. Fast forward one year and as of now, close to 50% of the U.S states offer AI guidance. Here’s a link to a helpful map from the AI for Education group detailing out all states that have published official AI guidance on the use of AI in K-12 schools. Note that the map is interactive and links out to summaries and full guidance for each state who has authored AI guidance.
Per the Center on Reinventing Education (CRPE), a non-partisan research and policy analysis center at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, “Guidances that have been published or that are currently in development focus on the ethical and equity implications of AI’s use, recommendations for teachers’ and students’ appropriate use of AI, and emerging best practices to enhance instruction…The guidance also explores the potential for AI to improve systemic inequities.”
The U.S. Department of Education released AI guidance for EdTech vendors in July 2024. A full PDF called Designing for Education with Artificial Intelligence: An Essential Guide for Developers “seeks to inform product leads and their teams of innovators, designers, developers, customer-facing staff, and legal teams as they work toward safety, security, and trust while creating AI products and services for use in education.”
Coming at this from the standards angle, the team at EdGate has evaluated the guidance documents to determine if they are set up like standards. That is, can content be aligned to the guidance documents, like standards? Are there learning outcomes that content could align to? The distinction we’ve found is that the guidance documents are set up as “frameworks”, as opposed to “standards.” The frameworks are aimed at educators for guidance in how to approach AI in the classroom.
That said, we expect that AI will be referenced within a wide array of subject area standards in the years to come. When looking at the Washington State AI classroom guidance documents it’s indicated that AI will play a starring role in the subjects of Career and Technical Education (CTE) and computer science. Additionally, AI will also be integrated into ELA, Mathematics, Social Studies, Climate and Environmental Science, Physics and Engineering, Special Education, ELL, and World Languages.
The California AI guidance documents support this hypothesis. Within the California guidance documents, it is noted that “Incorporating AI skills and computer science standards into K-12 education can equip students with the knowledge and abilities necessary to navigate and contribute to an increasingly AI-powered world.”
Watch EdGate’s standards update page for more info on standards added to our library: https://www.edgate.com/resources/updated-standards