According to Los Angeles County Superintendent Debra Duardo, the AI framework is a resource for all school districts as they work to take advantage of AI tools for students and staff as quickly and safely as possible.
“We tried to provide as much information, look at best practices, look at the research and provide guidance so we don’t have 80 districts scrambling to do this on their own,” she said. “Smaller districts may not have anybody that can do the detailed investigating and research to really think about AI — they rely on the county office of education to provide them with these tools.”
Ultimately, how a district chooses to implement AI remains a local decision, Duardo said. The role of the LACOE framework is to place as much information as possible at the fingertips of district decision-makers, shining a light on critical considerations around the use of AI in schools.
One such consideration is equity. Each section of the LACOE guidelines includes a list of actions districts can take to promote equal access to AI tools. Duardo said her hope is that providing this “equity lens” at every step will help address and prevent an AI digital divide.
“We need to keep equity in mind across every part of this guidance that we’re providing to districts,” she said. “We’ve done a lot of work on closing the digital divide and making sure that all children have access to the same information, to the same resources, to the same supports, to the same opportunities that technology can provide.”
LAYING THE FOUNDATION
To develop the guidelines, LACOE began by forming an AI task force of more than 40 stakeholders, including students, teachers and administrators. The agency then partnered with nonprofit Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up Research Initiative and Arizona State University’s Learning Transformation Studios to conduct a needs assessment, asking more than 1,100 teachers and administrators what would help them to make effective use of AI. Their answers included professional development, recommendations on best practices or use cases, and information on how student data is protected when using these tools.
Along with conducting a local needs assessment, LACOE also evaluated the risks and benefits of AI use in schools. Duardo said the former included excessive screen time and data privacy issues, and the latter included streamlining administrative tasks and improving student grades.
She recommended that districts conduct their own assessment of the needs, risks and benefits surrounding AI use to see if there are any local differences. From there, she said, school leaders can move on to the next steps of the LACOE AI framework, which range from vetting vendors and pilot testing products to training staff and developing a clear communications strategy.
DEDICATION TO INNOVATION
Most AI tools don’t require equipment beyond devices connected to the Internet, but there are investments schools can make to support the implementation and use of AI. Christopher Hoang, LACOE’s assistant director of technology innovation and outreach, said these investments might establish a dedicated AI team or task force and dedicated funding to support the use of AI tools.
“Our ed-tech and innovation team, we go out and evaluate different programs we think our districts could benefit from, and at the same time we also have the funding to purchase different items just to see how they work and how we can apply them, not just to teaching but also at the district level,” Hoang said.
For school districts that lack resources to create a technology innovation department, Duardo said it’s important to pull together a task force of employees to help implement tools. As far as finding funding for the technology itself, she said it requires a proactive approach.
“A lot of it has been going out there and seeking the funding that we need, because we knew that it was going to require a budget,” Duardo said. “We have engaged with philanthropic organizations, and we started our own Greater LA Education Foundation, which is a philanthropic arm to LACOE, so that we can do these innovative things.”
When it comes to the actual purchase of an AI program, LACOE’s guidelines emphasize the importance of vetting vendors and pilot testing products as part of the procurement process. Hoang said having a direct line of communication with each vendor is critical, as is the development of contracting protocols to ensure vendor compliance with school policies. He pointed to the nonprofit California IT in Education’s AI Resources Guide for IT Teams as a helpful explainer for vendor vetting, communication and accountability.
TRAINING, OUTREACH AND FEEDBACK
Hoang said he and his team provide training and support on the topic of AI to educators and administrators throughout L.A. County public schools. He said they often use a train-the-trainer model to equip school leaders with the skills and knowledge necessary to train others in their own school or district.
In terms of explaining safe and acceptable uses of AI to students and staff, the LACOE framework contains a link to a communications toolkit, which has templates for letters to students, staff and parents, among other outreach material. The template for the student letter includes an AI user agreement for students to sign, with pledges that range from not sharing personal information with any AI tool to being honest about when AI is used to help with assignments.
“I would also emphasize that parents play a really critical role in this,” Duardo said. “So we need to make sure that parents are part of the implementation, understanding what this means and understanding what their responsibility is as well in supervising their children and helping their children understand the risks of any type of technology.”
Final pieces of the LACOE guidelines include a push for continuous monitoring of any school AI program across key performance areas, such as student outcomes, cost efficiency and the maintenance of data security. In addition, the framework advises setting up outlets for feedback to uncover issues as they arise.
“School districts and educators should always be having this conversation, with any ed-tech tool — is this doing what we need it to do?” Hoang said. “That should be as frequent as possible, whether it’s based on informal feedback or formal feedback.”
CALMING CONCERNS
A responsive feedback loop, coupled with clear communication and robust support for teachers, could help calm concerns about the risk of AI use in schools — and avoid overwhelming educators in the face of these new tools.
“Teaching is a really hard job, so it’s on all of us to make this as easy as possible so that teachers see the benefits,” Duardo said. “It’s going to save them time, it’s going to enhance their ability to individualize instruction for students, it’s going to help with language issues and different types of learning styles.”
As for the general concerns many people have about AI in education — misuse of data, lack of human interaction, increased dependence on technology, deepfakes and cyber bullying — the LACOE guidelines are an effort to help districts manage these risks so they can take advantage of the benefits AI has to offer.
“These are all things that you need to really consider as AI is coming at you — we need to be able to understand it, we need to be able to manage it, we need to be able to mitigate risk, and we need to have tools,” Duardo said. “The idea is to prepare, because the potential, the positive things that are coming out of this advanced technology are so much greater than the risks.”
