This week’s update explores the dual edge of AI’s rapid rise in education — its potential to improve access and efficiency, and its deepening challenges around student privacy, data governance, and equitable use.
Top of Mind This Week: RAND’s new report “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Learning”
RAND’s new report present a comprehensive analyses of how AI is reshaping the learning ecosystem. With data and insights spanning federal policy to district-level capacity. The study synthesizes interviews with educators, technologists, and policymakers, offering a systems-level view of what sustainable AI implementation looks like.
RAND connects AI’s potential to evidence-based improvement science. It stresses that progress will depend less on flashy pilots and more on building governance structures, evaluation capacity, and human-machine collaboration models that actually scale. Not shocking, I really appreciated the attention to all of the things that matter in this discussion that are truly not about tools. Follow this link to access the full RAND Report — AI Use in Schools Is Quickly Increasing but Guidance Lags Behind
This week we saw a bit focus on all things privacy and practice. Here is a recap of things I want to be sure you take time to read.
Rising Use of AI in Schools Comes with Big Downsides for Students
AI tools are proliferating across classrooms, in a new article from EdWeek warns that the learning benefits may not yet match the hype. Teachers report increased plagiarism, over-reliance on chatbots for writing, and confusion about when AI use crosses ethical lines. This piece is worth reading because it centers students’ cognitive and social development. The article, reminds leaders that AI fluency must include metacognition and media literacy, not just tool proficiency. Read Rising Use of AI in Schools Comes With Big Downsides for Students here.
Student Data Rights Under Review
All4Ed’s latest brief calls on state policymakers to modernize K–12 privacy laws to account for AI’s growing presence in classrooms. It highlights the widening gap between tech innovation and regulatory oversight, urging states to define students’ rights to data transparency, consent, and algorithmic fairness. This brief offers a concrete roadmap for aligning AI innovation with legal and ethical boundaries. As many of us know, that alignment is something many states are still lacking. Read Students’ Right to Data Privacy– Guidance for Drafting Legislation and Policy brief here.
AI-Related Cyber Incidents on the Rise for Schools
A new report from Keeper Security reported that 41% of schools have already faced AI-related cyber incidents, including data leaks, phishing attempts, and unauthorized model access. The data this report highlights hard data behind what many IT teams have been not only sensing but experiencing. AI, according to the report, it introduces new vulnerabilities faster than schools can update their defenses. The takeaway is not fear, but urgency. We know that AI literacy must extend to cybersecurity and data hygiene for every staff member, it sounds like our time is running tight for some real solutions. Read the Keeper Security Research Report on AI-Related Cyber Incidents here.
Professors Catch Up to Students on AI Use
NPR captured a quiet but powerful shift in higher education: faculty are now using generative AI nearly as often as students. Professors are leveraging it to write rubrics, summarize readings, and prototype assignments, closing a gap that once left them playing catch-up. Give this a listen if you have a few minutes, it reframes AI use in higher ed not as a student “problem,” but as a shared professional transformation. It points to a future where AI fluency becomes part of teaching competency, not just academic honesty discussions. This is good “food for thought” — Listen to More college students are using AI for class. Their professors aren’t far behind, here.
AI, Privacy, and Risk — News from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)
The Center for Democracy and Technology has released both a new analysis and a public polling report showing that as schools adopt AI, risks to student privacy and fairness rise in tandem. In short, families are expressing concern about how student data is shared, while educators note a lack of clear guardrails for ethical AI deployment. The report highlights the systematic issue that inherent to AI adoption without transparent guidance or guide rails. The big flashing light in this report was the warning that AI adoption without careful attention to data privacy and other elements can inadvertently deepen mistrust between schools, families, and communities. This report gives us data to ask better questions about privacy central to AI strategy. Read the Hand in Hand: Schools’ Embrace of AI Connected to Increased Risks to Students report here, and you can download the polling slides that were shared during a recent event.
Higher Ed Steps Up AI Literacy
West Virginia University announced a new suite of AI Awareness and Learning Modules for both faculty and students. These micro-courses are focused on closing a growing literacy gap and normalizing discussions about ethics, authorship, and bias in AI use. This really is a great example of how local leadership can create a scalable, low-cost capacity building model that is self-directed and shared within a learning community. What I love most is that instead of banning AI tools, WVU is helping its community learn to use them responsibly. If there was ever a template other universities could easily adopt this would be it. You can see more about the availability of faculty and student AI awareness learning modules here.
Sora API — What It Is, and Implications for Education
In other news we have some technical movement this week. OpenAI’s Sora model and its newly accessible Sora API through Azure’s AI Foundry is an important move in generative media. As many of you already know, Sora can transform text or images into video sequences, and now developers can embed this capability directly into learning platforms, apps, and content systems.
With the introduction of Sora API anyone from an EdTech startup to a school media lab could programmatically generate short films, simulations, or instructional clips by simply providing a script or prompt. Sora’s parameters make it a genuine production engine rather than a simple media generator. Perhaps most promising, schools in resource-limited communities could generate culturally relevant, multilingual video content at scale, bridging gaps in access to high-quality media production.
It is important for educators to remember that with Sora’s ability to create hyperrealistic video introduces new challenges around misinformation, bias, and authenticity. The old idea that “video equals truth” is now a pedagogically dangerous idea that necessitates us to spend time with our students of all ages talking about intellectual property, licensing, and data bias. These are all unsettled legal and ethical questions that we aren’t yet making timely progress on addressing. Meanwhile compute and cost barriers could deepen inequities between well-resourced and under-resourced communities. A lot of folks in education want to be sure that AI isn’t creating larger barrier nor creating low engagement among leareners. Sora is a powerful tool but remember that systems need to adopt clear AI literacy, governance, and ethical frameworks alongside it.
That’s all I have time for this week — so much going on — the opportunities are endless but friends, so are the challenges!
Keep your eye on the ball — it is way too easy to get distracted.
Remember that the future of education is being shaped now and we need more voices that are informed, thoughtful, and equity-driven. We need informed, thoughtful voices to make meaningful choices. Subscribe to Jody’s newsletter for weekly updates as soon as they’re published at https://jodybritten.medium.com/subscribe
