Artificial intelligence is hurtling toward American classrooms, fueled by federal incentives, corporate promises, and a wave of hype about “personalized learning.” The White House pushes school districts to adopt AI at breakneck speed, and tech companies are lining up to cash in.
But there’s one glaring problem: most local school boards have no idea what they’re signing up for—and kids could pay the price.
The federal government’s stance is clear. In April, President Trump signed an executive order fast-tracking AI adoption in schools, aiming to make students “AI-literate” and competitive in tomorrow’s workforce. On paper, it sounds like a leap forward, but here’s reality: the infrastructure to safely and effectively implement AI doesn’t exist yet. Elected board members– who are not engineers, cybersecurity experts, or data scientists–run most of America’s 13,000 school districts.
Yet they’re being asked to sign multi-million-dollar contracts with AI vendors, oversee algorithms that can shape a child’s education, and centralize troves of sensitive student data. There are no clear federal guidelines to help them make those decisions. This leaves the door wide open for vendors to overbill districts for services they provide or mishandle information they’re provided by the school district. In short: rushing to implement new technologies in schools leaves it ripe for abuse from third parties.
We’ve already seen what can go wrong. In 2022, hackers breached the Los Angeles Unified School District systems, leaking thousands of student records, which included student information covering drivers’ license numbers, email addresses, and academic records. A year later, a vendor building an AI chatbot for the district mishandled private student data before collapsing amid fraud allegations. That contract cost taxpayers $6 million and provided little more than a cautionary tale about what happens when school boards buy into big promises without hard protections. Elsewhere, districts are lurching between panic and experimentation. Miami-Dade County banned AI outright, then partnered with Google to cautiously deploy AI tools under strict oversight. Their deliberate approach is an outlier. Most districts don’t have the expertise, the legal clarity, or the cybersecurity resources to know what’s safe and what’s snake oil.
Meanwhile, Washington is flooding the education market with incentives for AI adoption but offering virtually no guardrails. We have laws like FERPA and COPPA that protect student data, but no updated standards on how they apply to algorithms scanning a child’s essays or storing their personal information in a corporate database. There are still plenty of concerns about how social media platforms affect kids, why would the effects of AI in the classroom be any different?
The pace of the federal government has been slow, too slow for informed decision making on any local level. Vendors can overpromise and underdeliver with the knowledge that most school boards aren’t equipped to push back. The terms of LAUSD’s agreement with AllHere, the company building the chatbot for the district, explicitly obligated the company to adhere to district standards, which they then violated. The only reason the distinct found out about it was because a whistleblower from the company came forward.
AI in education marks a dangerous moment. AI can do real good in education, including automating tedious administrative tasks, helping teachers provide more individualized feedback, and giving students tools to learn at their own pace. But right now, the incentives are stacked to push adoption first and ask questions later. That’s a recipe for wasted taxpayer money, privacy violations, and irreversible mistakes in kids’ education.
Before another district signs a multimillion-dollar AI contract, Washington needs to set the rules of the road. Update federal privacy guidelines immediately. Create model contracts and compliance checklists for school boards negotiating with vendors. Expand funding for cybersecurity to protect student data from inevitable attacks. Hold companies to strict standards before piloting an AI tool in a classroom.
Without these basics, AI in schools is a high-stakes gamble being made with other people’s children and money.
Parents want their kids prepared for a future driven by technology. But rushing headfirst into AI adoption with no safety net doesn’t make kids smarter; it only makes them more vulnerable. If the federal government is serious about bringing AI to classrooms, it must ensure school districts have the expertise, resources, and legal clarity to do it right. Until then, the most brilliant move is to create a playbook for districts to implement. Otherwise, we’ll learn the hard way that a classroom is no place for a technology free-for-all.
Aiden Buzzetti is the President of the 1776 Project Foundation. He was formerly the Head of Coalitions and Candidate Recruitment for the 1776 Project PAC. Aiden is a native of Marietta, Georgia and a student of public schools. He graduated from American University with a degree in political science.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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