Is AI Policy Just Guesswork?

Today on This Week with EdSurge, we look at AI policy from two very different vantage points. One guest spent a year coding AI policy from more than 100 school districts across the country. The other helped write her own district's policy from the ground up. Listen as they both explore what happens when a policy leaves the page and is applied in an actual classroom. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN District AI policies fall into five levels ranging from actively promoting AI to outright prohibition, and Jody Britten found that 44.3 percent of the 122 districts she studied land in the conditional, teacher-directed middle level. Only 3.3 percent of districts studied sit at Level 1, actively promoting AI with equity built into the design, while nearly a quarter restrict or ban AI outright. Most districts studied operate in states with official AI guidance, yet only 15.6 percent of those districts actually reference that guidance in their own policy. Tambra Clark found that writing her own district's AI governance policy in Birmingham required retraining her committee first, because knowledge in the room was too uneven to write a single line. STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Story 1 Study: The National AI Policy Landscape in K-12 Education by Jody Britten AI School Policy Database Story 2 Learn about the Voices of Change Fellowship STAY CONNECTED Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters at edsurge.com. Find the latest education news at edsurge.com/news. Follow EdSurge on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS Host: Ira Apfel Featuring: Jody Britten, Interim CEO, AI and Education Studio Tambra Clark, Technology Integration Facilitator, Birmingham City Schools