The future of artificial intelligence in education must be a shared effort across curriculum providers, district and school leaders, and policymakers, writes Sari Factor, vice chairman and chief strategy officer at Imagine Learning, in an eSchool News column.
Without guardrails, introducing and implementing AI into classrooms can subvert the foundation of effective learning. Many AI models are built for general use and later “adapted” for education, but this retrofitting approach can introduce bias, misinformation, and misalignment with instructional goals. If AI is not purpose-built for education, it can amplify instructional inconsistency, widen learning gaps, and erode teacher trust.
Efforts to implement High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) and evidence-based strategies in K-12 schools in recent years have begun to deliver measurable improvements in student learning. Research from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy found that access to high-quality instructional materials has a direct impact on student achievement, particularly for historically underserved populations. These curricula give teachers proven lessons created with intention and a clear purpose. But there is a caveat: Even with wider HQIM adoption, teachers continue to supplement the chosen curriculum with often unvetted, disparate, or misaligned external resources.
Teachers spend 7-12 hours every week searching for or creating instructional materials, pulling from state websites, teacher-created worksheets and free or purchased digital content, studies show. This patchwork, improvised approach can produce inconsistent pedagogy, gaps in standards coverage and lost instructional time, writes Factor.
Using AI to better support teachers is an encouraging development that could save educators time and enhance student engagement. Here are the top five AI use cases teachers said would help them manage many of the more mundane and time-consuming aspects of their work, according to a 2023 RAND Corporation study:
- Supporting students with learning differences
- Generating quizzes and assessments
- Adjusting content to be an appropriate grade level for students
- Generating lesson plans
- Generating assignments (e.g., worksheet materials)
But introducing AI-powered solutions may also cause inconsistency or misalignment. Most AI tools in education today are not designed with curriculum integrity in mind. So teachers may unknowingly generate content that conflicts with their district’s curriculum. This erodes the consistency and effectiveness of HQIM and unintentionally creates learning gaps rather than closing them, Factor writes.
Proper safeguards are needed. Without guard rails, AI-generated materials could amplify, rather than reduce, instructional inconsistencies. This would require educators to spend even more time reviewing and correcting misaligned content.
AI implementations must be grounded in trusted, research-backed curriculums and aligned with state standards and district priorities, education leaders are demanding. They want AI to enhance their chosen curricula, not replace them. AI-generated lesson plans, practice activities, and instructional recommendations must reinforce the effective implementation of HQIM. By ensuring AI is curriculum-informed, districts can unlock AI’s potential without sacrificing instructional quality. Factor writes.
A solid approach to responsible AI ensures generated content is safe, accurate, and academically sound. This approach uses trusted, research-backed HQIM and rigorous vetting for safety, accuracy, ethics and academic integrity.
This is how educators minimize the risks of irrelevant content, misinformation, and bias, and align AI outputs with educational goals. Students benefit from a secure environment to safely engage with powerful AI tools and content. This also ensures the intellectual property (IP) of curricula and the IP of others, such as trade publishers, authors and artists, from whom we license content, while maintaining our educational content’s integrity, writes Factor.
AI can help, but only if its use is intentional and aligned with curriculum. Time savings must not come at the expense of instructional integrity, and personalization must keep students on track, not lead them away from core learning objectives. Most of all, educators must be empowered when they use AI-driven content, not further overwhelmed,” Factor concludes.
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