🛝 82% of Teachers Got No AI Training

Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.

This week's reality check: 82% of teachers have received no formal AI guidance even as 61% use the technology. 75% of ed-tech leaders are very concerned about AI-enabled cyberattacks, but only 7% have prepared their data systems. And the most AI-advanced districts aren't the ones with the most tools. They're the ones that defined the problem before buying the solution.

Data Gem

Charter school growth has collapsed. In 2010-11, 421 new charter schools opened across the country. In 2022-23, that number was 11. Meanwhile, 165 schools closed. The sector now serves 3.8 million students across 8,150 schools, but net growth has flatlined.

82% of Teachers Have No Formal AI Guidance. 61% Are Using It Anyway.

A nationally representative Gallup/Walton Family Foundation survey of 2,069 teachers found that 82% have received no formal guidance on how to apply AI tools to their work.

48% got informal guidance only. 34% got none at all.

Meanwhile, 61% of teachers are using AI, up from 34% in December 2023.

The guidance gaps are sharpest where the stakes are highest. 58% have no guidance on using AI for grading and feedback. 

69% have no guidance on using it for one-on-one instruction or tutoring.

Only seven states require school districts to develop AI use policies. 36 state education departments have issued guidance documents, but they tend to be too broad to translate into classroom practice.

At Streator Township High School in Illinois, assistant principal Nick McGurk described the result: teachers are waiting.

"We're better off waiting until we get some guidance, as opposed to diving into a full policy and then having to reinvent the wheel," he said.

But in Louisiana, where the state education department put out AI guidance in August 2024, the picture is different.

"Oftentimes people may be against regulations that tell what they can and cannot do, but when there are clear structures in place to say what is an acceptable use or what are appropriate practices, it liberates the user instead of restricts them," said Justin Wax, principal at Denham Springs Junior High. "The decision becomes whether I want to use this, not whether I can."

Joseph South, chief innovation officer for ISTE+ASCD, said the core problem is structural: "It's not something that you learned about in your education, wasn't part of your master's degree, wasn't part of your training. So for you to feel comfortable providing guidance on it, you want to feel like you understand it."

For education innovators, the 82% is the market size. 

District AI-policy authoring platforms that translate state guidance into classroom-ready rules. AI professional development tied to specific instructional use cases (grading, tutoring, feedback), not generic "intro to AI" workshops. And equity-focused implementation coaching for higher-needs schools, where the survey found guidance is even scarcer.

75% of Ed-Tech Leaders Fear AI Cyberattacks

CoSN's 2026 State of EdTech Leadership report surveyed 607 K-12 ed-tech leaders across 44 states.

75% said AI-enabled cyberattacks are "very concerning." 

62% said the same about student data privacy. 52% cited lack of teacher training for AI integration.

The concerns are not hypothetical - Canvas was breached twice in eight days this month, exposing data tied to 275 million users.

But here's the gap that should alarm every vendor and district leader.

88% of districts have AI support initiatives in place. 70% train instructional staff on generative AI tools and 54% provide productivity platforms for administrative staff.

Only 7% have prepared their identity access management systems or data storage environments for AI.

That's an 81-point gap between "we're adopting AI" and "we've secured the infrastructure for AI."

Ed-tech leaders aren't worried about AI replacing teachers. Only 5% expressed that concern. They're worried about the security architecture that doesn't exist yet.

The optimism is real too. 74% see productivity as AI's greatest potential. 67% see personalized education. 46% see student tutoring.

But optimism without infrastructure is risk.

For education innovators, the 88% vs 7% gap is the clearest product signal of the week. AI-specific cybersecurity audits for school systems. Identity and access management retrofits designed for education data environments. Vendor risk-scoring platforms that evaluate whether the AI tools districts just bought are actually secure.

The Most AI-Advanced Districts Aren't the Ones With the Most Tools

The Center on Reinventing Public Education tracked early AI-adopter districts over the past year. Their database nearly doubled, from 40 to 79 districts.

CRPE sorted them into three tiers.

58% are "System Improvers." They use AI to do the same things better: streamlining teacher efficiency, automating admin tasks, offering AI-enabled tutoring. Teachers in these districts report saving about five hours of weekly planning time.

16% are "System Changers." They focus on nontraditional measures of student success, aligning AI with ongoing reforms like mastery-based or competency-based learning.

Only 7% are "Reimaginers." They're using AI to fundamentally restructure staffing, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment.

The finding that matters most: AI fluency does not, on its own, produce transformative outcomes.

Districts that produce real results aren't just adopting AI tools, they defined an instructional vision first and then used AI to accelerate it.

One superintendent described the effect: "We're about a year and a half ahead of our original implementation schedule, and I think their organic AI use is what put it a year and a half further down the schedule."

That district was already pursuing mastery-based learning. AI amplified a strategy that existed before the tool arrived.

"AI being a motivator for school systems to realize that outdated modes of instruction are no longer relevant," said one district's director of AI and technology. "It's a moment of reckoning."

CRPE's recommendations are specific: articulate the problem you're trying to solve before selecting tools. 

Develop evaluation approaches that measure how AI changes classroom instruction, not just whether teachers use it. And invite parents, students, and stakeholders into the process.

For education innovators, the CRPE data shows that the opportunity is in building the implementation layer that turns adoption into outcomes. AI strategy consulting that starts with instructional vision, not product demos. Evaluation dashboards that measure learning impact, not usage metrics. And change-management platforms that help the 58% of "Improvers" become "Changers" by connecting AI workflows to actual pedagogical redesign.

⚡️More Quick Hits

This week in education:

• AFT shifts from AI partner to AI restrictor, proposes banning student-facing AI in elementary school — The 1.8-million-member union that partnered with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft on a $23 million teacher AI training academy now calls for screen bans in pre-K through 2nd grade, a "big tech tax," and AI safety standards

• Education Department proposes eliminating IDEA racial-disparity data collections as OCR staff drops from 530 to 271 — The change would remove indicators tracking racial disparities in suspensions, expulsions, and disproportionate special education placement, while OCR's budget would drop from $140 million to $91 million

• Earnings test could fail 53% of religious studies BA and 89% of MA programs — Programs failing for two consecutive years could lose access to federal student loans and some Pell Grants, with the proposal drawing more than 8,500 public comments

• 74% of school districts concerned SNAP cuts will reduce automatic school meal certification — SNAP participation has fallen by 3.3 million people in a year, CBO projects 2.4 million fewer per average month through 2034, and 700,000+ children across 12 states have already lost food assistance

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