🤖 Breaking down the U.S. executive order on AI

🖥 Test drive Vivi — no strings attached.

Vivi knows the best way to know if tech is right for you is to try it yourself!

That’s why we offer our Vivi Free Trial for Administrators.

Set it up, screen share, broadcast alerts, run digital signage, and more.

Full platform access – free for 30 days. No meetings, no forms, no credit cards.

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ How AI Is Transforming Business Operations in K-12 (via EdTech Magazine): Back-office and IT staff are using generative AI tools to boost productivity and operate more efficiently.

2️⃣ Teachers Believe That AI Is Here to Stay in Education. How It Should Be Taught Is Debatable (via EdSurge)

3️⃣ New Research Finds Schools of Education Fail to Prepare Teachers to Use AI (via The 74): Not one superintendent we spoke with considered higher education a resource for artificial intelligence-related professional learning.

📢 Your voice: Where districts should start

Last week’s poll: Where should schools/districts start addressing AI?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Assembling an AI task force (34)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Adjusting policy (7)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Creating a system to vet tools (4)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (6)

Assembling an AI task force: It is the voices of many stakeholders on a task force who will determine policy and adjustments that need to be made. The task force will also create a system within the policy to vet AI tools. Districts have to start with teachers, students, and other stakeholders to determine next steps, and a task force is the way forward. — E. Asamoto

Other: Schools need to first and foremost protect the safety of their students and staff, ensuring that FERPA and COPPA are compliant for the tool and how the tool is being used. Get programs vetted and approved first, while clearly communicating that future task force and policy decisions will be implemented. — K. Fergason

Assembling an AI task force: If a group of passionate people are driving the AI implementation of AI in districts it will have more support and be more meaningful. This is not a one person, one policy type of thing. — J. Tanabe

Other: To drive meaningful change with AI in education, we must invest in training and resources to establish multiple professional learning communities (PLCs) across different grade levels and subjects. These communities should inspire educators, engage them deeply, and empower them to lead essential shifts in policy, attitudes, teaching methods, and curriculum. The actions suggested in the poll reflect a top-down approach at the district level. However, decision-makers must become well-informed and supportive to effectively enable those who plan and execute teaching and learning every day. Having participated in numerous task forces and committees focused on technology, I have seen firsthand how they often fail to bring about lasting, positive transformation. — Ken Peterson

Assembling an AI task force: Start with the task force so you can then begin adjusting the policies and creating a vetting system for the various tools. That way, nobody can claim they were left out of the decision making process or, at least, were not aware of decisions being made along the way. — K. Weeks

What would you like to read in AI for Admins?

What’s a topic you’d like to see covered here? Hit REPLY to this email and let me know.

Have you done anything you’d like to share with the AI for Admins community? Hit REPLY and let me know.

Would you like to write a guest post to support and equip AI for Admins readers? Hit REPLY and let me know.

🗳 Poll: The executive order on AI in education

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response. (I’ll try to pull names from email addresses. If you don’t want me to do that, please say so.)

Should AI be used in any step of the teacher evaluation process? Irene Burch from Indiana

🏛 Breaking down the U.S. executive order on AI

Last week, an executive order was signed in the United States, stating that it would make AI education a national priority for K-12 schools.

“It is the policy of the United States to promote AI literacy and proficiency among Americans by promoting the appropriate integration of AI into education, providing comprehensive AI training for educators, and fostering early exposure to AI concepts and technology to develop an AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.”

The basics of the executive order

The executive order called for the following:

• The Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge: “encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI, promote wide geographic adoption of technological advancement, and foster collaboration between government, academia, philanthropy, and industry to address national challenges with AI solutions.”

• Public-private partnerships: connecting industry, academic institutions and others to develop online resources to teach foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills.

• Enhancing educator training: prioritizing AI in discritionary grant programs for teacher training, emphasizing:

  • reducing time-intensive administrative tasks

  • improving teacher training and evaluation

  • providing PD to educators to integrate AI into all subject areas

  • providing PD to teach AI in stand-alone computer science and other courses

• Promoting apprenticeships: expanding apprenticeships in AI-related occupations. These will likely target high school students through career and technical education (CTE) pathways in areas like data science, robotics, machine learning, etc.

Embedded AI literacy

There are some calls to create (or promote) stand-alone courses related to AI and apprenticeships. However, one big takeaway for me is the emphasis on embedded AI literacy.

Under the section about educator AI training, it states: “providing professional development for all educators, so they can integrate the fundamentals of AI into all subject areas.”

To me, this doesn’t sound like the approach of “oh, this is techy … so let’s give it to the tech teacher and the computer science teacher.”

This sounds like all hands on deck. Everyone develops AI literacy. And everyone incorporates it throughout the curriculum.

Embedded AI literacy is a concept I used last spring when I was teaching high school Spanish full-time — and it’s a concept I’m really excited about to prepare students for an AI-integrated workforce and world.

Here’s an example. In my Spanish classes, we used AI-generated images as a conversation and writing prompt. When I displayed the images, I identified the images as AI-generated (modeling appropriate AI use). Then, we took a moment to pick out the “AI weirdness,” finding oddities in the images that help us identify them as artificial — and not authentic, real-world photos.

It’s so easy to create a silo around an artificial intelligence course, learning concepts like machine learning and neural networks in isolation … then returning to other classes and subjects without seeing the connection.

When teachers have a fundamental understanding of AI, they’re empowered to talk about it whenever it comes up in conversation or instruction. That’s going to be way more powerful than an isolated unit or course.

Funding for educator training

The executive order calls for the Secretary of Education to “prioritize the use of AI in discretionary grant programs for teacher training” within 120 days.

• That would land around August (you know, when we educators don’t have anything at all going on … 😉 ).

It calls out the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Title II of the Higher Education Act (HEA). That could mean …

• Title II funds being steered toward AI-related professional development for educators

• Title IV funds being used for AI curriculum integration or classroom tech tools

• Encouragement to align Title I school improvement plans with AI literacy or workforce readiness goals

Notice that this doesn’t add new funding. It’s just a prioritization of existing funds.

Upcoming deadlines

Throughout the executive order, it lists deadlines — 90-day deadlines, 120-day deadlines, 180-day deadlines. As these deadlines are met, we’ll get more and more information about how this executive order will be utilized.

Here’s a summary …

90-day deadlines (late July 2025)

• The AI education task force identifies existing federal AI resources

• Guidance on utilizing formula and discretionary grant funds

• Guidance on leveraging existing research programs

120-day deadlines (mid August 2025)

• Prioritization on AI use in discretionary grant programs for teacher training

• Prioritization on research on the use of AI in education by the National Science Foundation (NSF)

• Emphasizing AI-related apprenticeships through program standards and discretionary funds

• Encouragement to use Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funds to develop AI skills

• Identification and promotion of high-quality AI education and certifications

• Support for creation of high school AI courses and certification programs

• Prioritization of AI in educational grants

180-day deadlines (October 2025)

• Deploy resources from public-private partnerships to schools

What I still want to know

The executive order provides a skeleton for all of the actions that will happen in the K-12 and higher education environment. However, the way it’s implemented is still unclear — and should become more clear in the coming months.

Here’s what I’m still wondering …

• With all of the cuts to the Department of Education — including the Office of Educational Technology — are we equipped to actually follow through on all of this? Many of the people who were most equipped to guide and support us in this initiative no longer work for the Department of Education.

• What do we mean by “AI literacy”? Definitions matter. We need to be clear about what’s covered — and not covered — by AI literacy. It needs to be much broader and more forward-thinking than “best ways to prompt ChatGPT”. And it needs to be more focused and practical than “here’s a general overview of AI technology.”

• How will the Presidential AI Challenge actually encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI? Is it just shout-outs in online publications? Are we talking about prizes and grant money? Will we emphasize innovative ways to push teaching and learning forward … or will we pat wealthy districts on the back for significant financial investments into edtech tools?

• What will educator training look like? The executive order calls out “reducing time-intensive tasks.” But we’ve also seen edtech AI tools that just speed up ineffective teaching practices. Will we actually train teachers on the basics of AI — and how it can move teaching and learning forward? Or will it become edtech product training, showing them what all the buttons do on AI tools?

• What does “improving teacher training and evaluation” mean? I can only imagine what the combination of “AI” and “teacher evaluations” could mean. AI bias goes beyond gender and racial bias in images. It impacts who is admitted to college … who gets loans and who doesn’t … and it could provide unfair and unfavorable evaluations to teachers. I hope we get clarity on this.

• Where will the money come from? This seems like another example of “same amount of resources … but stretch them further.” If no new funding is allocated to this AI initiative, it means that other things it could be used for will go unfunded — or underfunded.

More information on the executive order

I created a deep research report on ChatGPT that used 37 sources. It focuses on the implications on K-12 education, educator training, grant funding, and action steps for school districts. You can read the whole deep research report below.