With many students and educators already using widely available artificial intelligence tools, state lawmakers and school districts are playing catch-up on AI policies.

In Maryland, for example, AI usage policies for K-12 schools are “all over the map,” Democratic state Senator Katie Fry Hester said.

In some school districts, she said, AI use is encouraged, while in others it is restricted, or — a worst-case scenario for Hester — there is little to no policy guidance at all.

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States are taking varied approaches to AI governance, though the European Union's regulatory framework offers both lessons and cautionary examples for U.S. policymakers working through similar challenges.

“What we heard repeatedly is that the teachers were feeling like they had to navigate artificial intelligence entirely on their own,” Hester said.

Hester said square one for lawmakers is AI literacy, which was the aim of new legislation that she sponsored and that was signed into law in May. It requires an AI coordinator in each school system, a statewide AI professional development for teachers and AI literacy to be a component of career readiness and computer science standards for K-12 students. It also requires the state Department of Education to provide certain guidance on AI.

Many other states have also been trying to create AI policies for schools. Lawmakers filed more than 134 bills across 31 states this year related to AI in education, focusing on data privacy, usage restriction in the classroom, literacy and training, according to MultiState, a government relations firm.

A survey by the Center for Democracy & Technology showed that a large majority of teachers (85%) reported using AI in their classroom during the 2024-25 school year, while 86% of students said they’d used AI for either personal or school-related reasons. But only about half of teachers and students reported that they received some training or information about AI from someone at their school, and few received training or information on risks of AI use.

A turning point for schools came with the rollout of ChatGPT in 2022, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, chief advocacy and governance officer for the School Superintendents Association. “AI was something that could not be gatekept,” said Ellerson Ng. “It was in the classroom the minute students were able to access it.”

Her association does not take positions on state AI bills or policies. But she said districts are trying to avoid knee-jerk, reactive policies such as New York City’s brief 2022 ban of ChatGPT because of fears about cheating.

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Some states have made progress in laying the groundwork for AI policy in K-12.

Ohio has set a July 1 deadline for every school district, community school and STEM school to adopt an AI use policy. The state’s model policy recommends that districts address student and staff uses, privacy, ethical use, teacher-specific uses, vendor agreements, third-party AI tools and student assessments.

A new Idaho law signed in March requires local school districts and charter schools to devise local policies for AI usage in K-12 schools, requires state standards for AI literacy and education training and ensures that no AI “replaces or eliminates a human teacher.”

An Oklahoma law enacted last month requires AI tools to be age-appropriate and requires teachers to review anything AI produces before using it in the classroom. It also allows parents to opt their children out of using AI tools. The law also directs the state education department to develop AI guidance and requires local school boards to set policies before the 2027-28 school year.

What we heard repeatedly is that the teachers were feeling like they had to navigate artificial intelligence entirely on their own.– Maryland Democratic state Senator Katie Fry Hester

Yet even as schools are being sold on AI products by numerous vendors, there’s a growing skepticism about AI in classrooms. It follows a similar backlash about social media and digital technology’s academic and mental health effects on students, which has led to more states and districts putting in place cellphone bans and rethinking their reliance on laptops.

In the Center for Democracy & Technology survey, half of students said using AI in class made them feel less connected to their teachers, and 70% of teachers said they were concerned that students’ use of AI was preventing them from learning important skills.

Schools need to weigh the benefits of adopting AI tools in the classroom against their effect on student privacy, mental health and social skills, said Sue Thotz, director of outreach for Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on technology and its effect on children and families.

Schools, Thotz said, may be the “only mandated safe space” where students can learn to use and access emerging technology. But she and other education experts believe districts need to increase scrutiny of products.

Globally, the market for AI products in K-12 schools was worth around $391.2 million in 2024, and could rise to more than $9 billion by 2034, according to market.us, a market research company. That includes AI products for tutoring, personalized learning, automated grading, lesson planning and administrative tasks.

“When I talk about AI literacy, it’s not how to use AI. It’s understanding how AI is built,” said Thotz. “Why is it being created? Who’s profiting off of this?”

‘Giving a tool to children’

New York Assemblymember Robert Carroll said he uses artificial intelligence in his own work and sees its value. As someone who struggled with dyslexia as a child, he also thinks technology can help students with disabilities.

But he also wants to keep AI out of most K-8 classroom instruction. Students should learn basic subject matter first — in conjunction with critical thinking — and then later use the tools that can assist them, he said.

Carroll, a Democrat, has introduced legislation that would prohibit the use of most AI in K-8 classrooms, with exceptions for diagnostic testing and support for students with disabilities.

“It is imperative that all children gain strong foundational skills, especially in literacy and numeracy, and it seems that AI is uniquely positioned to possibly undermine that,” he said. “There’s a difference between giving a tool to adults and giving a tool to children who have yet to master skills.”

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Rather than full bans, most bills seeking to restrict AI have opted to focus on age restrictions, parental opt-outs, oversight and bans on using AI to replace teachers.

This year, Florida’s “AI Bill of Rights” proposal would have included a statewide restriction on student access to AI instructional tools before sixth grade, with exceptions for use supervised by school personnel, English-learner translation support and disability accommodations. It overwhelmingly passed the Senate 37-1, but died in the House.

A new Connecticut law adds computer science to the required public school curriculum, including AI and emerging technologies. Connecticut lawmakers in 2025 failed to pass a bill aiming to stop AI from “replacing” public school educators.

Sophia Romee, the general manager of the GenAI Studio, an initiative studying how students and educators use generative AI at the College Board, the nonprofit that administers the Advanced Placement curriculum and SAT tests for high schools, said she is concerned that only about 1 in 5 districts that allow students to use generative AI have a formal policy governing its use.

The College Board’s research, Romee said, shows many students are worried about becoming too reliant on AI, and that adults need to give clearer guidance about where using AI tools for brainstorming, revising and tutoring crosses the ethical line into cheating.

“Students are far more self-aware about AI’s risks than headlines suggest.”

Like aviation in 1905

Jason Coley, director of the Center for Academic Innovation at Maria College in Albany, New York, said the policy debate needs to move beyond whether schools are “for” or “against” the use of AI.

“The better question is what kinds of AI use are supervised, age appropriate, transparent, and tied to real learning,” Coley said. Schools need guardrails around privacy, student data, bias, teacher training and equity of access, he said, but also permission to “experiment responsibly.”

Ellerson Ng, of the School Superintendents Association, said superintendents see AI as part of a larger umbrella of disruptive technologies in schools that has evolved from calculators to laptops to cellphones. The lesson, she said, is that overreactive policy rarely works. She also said schools should not cover AI in a separate policy, but as part of a broader technology policy.

“I don’t have a calculator policy. Why would I have an AI policy?” she said, describing how some district leaders think about the issue. “I have a technology policy.”

With past technologies such as cellphones and laptops, adults could often control when students had access, Ellerson Ng said. With AI apps and platforms, many students accessed the tools before teachers, principals or state officials were even aware of them.

That makes bans difficult, she said. Schools can block tools on school-owned devices and networks, but “you’re only one personal device away from social media and AI being in your schools.”

Justin Reich, an associate professor of digital media at MIT, said that uncertainty around AI should make policymakers cautious about declaring best practices too soon.

Reich said states are trying to regulate classroom AI at a moment when the field is still so unstable that “writing a guide for AI in 2026 is like writing a guide for aviation in 1905” before airlines, airports or even commercial flight.

“If you were to take any of the AI literacy documents, AI readiness documents, even the moratorium documents, and put them against a checklist,” said Reich, “there would be a lot of boxes in the ‘we’re making this up’ column and not a lot in the ‘we have evidence’ column.”

State lawmakers and school districts should be honest that they don’t know what they’re doing, are relying on limited expert information and that policy is subject to change with new information, Reich said.

“Lawmakers will need to be honest that what they propose now could be completely outdated in two years.”