Much has been said about artificial intelligence and its effects on schools and school systems, raising debates about its use and implementation both for and against. Yet its use has skyrocketed among students and educators with each segment increasingly interested in the tech. Nearly three-quarters of schoolteachers believe AI can aid learning while over half are finding ways to integrate it, according to Carnegie Learning’s State of AI in Education report. AI is gaining ground in edtech, assisting faculty and staff in routine tasks and raising worries about student learning loss and academic dishonesty. But as the intrigue rises, so do the questions. What tools are faculty and staff using and are they effective? Do they compromise sensitive data and existing regulations? How can schoolteachers monitor and address AI use among students?
Nearly three-quarters of educators say their schools and districts have no comprehensive AI policy or guidelines according to an EdWeek Research Center survey. With so much at stake, edtech leaders, researchers and school data officers are embracing procurement policy as a way to systematize school and district AI use and bring current use into compliance with regulations and innovations in learning. By procuring AI edtech and rolling it out across schools and districts, school leaders can help address workday redundancies, ensure data protection and compliance and provide teachers with pre-vetted tools consistent with existing learning goals. This turn to AI procurement has spurred noteworthy innovations in procurement policy, advancing both short-term and long-term ways in which school leaders can ensure incoming AI products are affordable, effective, compliant, accessible and safe.
AI procurement benchmarks are important policy innovations. They are frameworks and guidelines for building comprehensive and compliant AI procurement policies. Procurement benchmarks provide accountability standards, vet domains, and sample language that can serve as templates for new policies and quality checks for existing ones. Procurement benchmarks can also provide guidelines when consulting or negotiating with edtech companies in cases where procurers may not know how to inquire about a provider’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) or product development reinvestment ratio. Procurement benchmarks recently released by the Opportunity Labs at education law firm Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost have become an open source gold standard for AI procurers.
Longer term, experts such as Dr. Velislava Hillman, a fellow at the London School of Economics and leader in edtech auditing and evaluation, has recently advocated for the adoption of AI learning product licenses. The idea is quite simple: Like educators who obtain a professional license before going into the classroom, policymakers would hold edtech companies to the same standards before students interface with their tools. Dr. Hillman argues that AI companies should be compliant with the IEEE’s Standards for age-appropriate digital technology design.
As school leaders increasingly embrace procurement policy to address AI’s challenges in schools, policymakers can now do so with these short-term and long-term innovations in mind.