In a national survey released last month, a majority of Texas teachers said they used AI tools in math instruction at least a few times during the 2024-25 school year. But more than one in five teachers said their districts hadn’t provided professional development on how to use those tools.
But as AI becomes a more common feature of everyday life, North Texas school leaders are figuring out how to incorporate those tools into classrooms without watering down instruction or jeopardizing student privacy.
“We owe our students, and we owe the professionals that work in our system the opportunities to be exposed to and learn to use these tools well and responsibly,” said Steve Simpson, director of technology integration and innovation for the Arlington Independent School District.
AI USE IN THE CLASSROOM IS GROWING, RESEARCH SHOWS
According to the RAND Corporation’s 2025 American Mathematics Educator Survey, 52 percent of Texas teachers said they had used AI tools at least once for math instruction during the 2024-25 school year. Of those who said they used those tools, the largest share said they used them only sporadically, less than once per quarter.
Nationwide, the majority of teachers still say they never use AI in the classroom. But that majority is shrinking quickly, according to the RAND survey. The percentage of teachers who said they’d never used AI in math instruction shrank from 82 percent during the 2023-24 school year to 56 percent last year.
But both in Texas and nationwide, more than 20 percent of teachers said they hadn’t received training to help them use the education technology tools their districts had provided them with.
A growing number of North Texas school districts are developing plans around the use of AI in their classrooms or rolling out AI-powered tools that they hope will help teachers do their jobs more effectively. Over the summer, officials in the Dallas school district announced they were adopting a new program designed to help middle school math teachers improve their instruction when students struggle to grasp new concepts. And in the Mesquite school district, officials developed a program called AYO that monitors student progress.
Last spring, Arlington ISD convened a committee made up of teachers and district administrators to develop guidance for appropriate use of AI tools in the classroom. Then, last month, the district’s board adopted a set of priorities that includes the development of a districtwide plan for AI.
Simpson, the Arlington ISD technology director, said a districtwide plan is important because it ensures equitable access to AI technology and instruction for every student. If the district left decisions around AI tools to principals or individual teachers, access would likely be different from one classroom to another, depending on the teacher, he said — early adopters would be quick to incorporate AI into their classes, while those who are more resistant or skeptical about the technology would be slower to make the change, he said.
A big part of the district’s plan includes training for teachers on how to use AI tools safely and effectively in the classroom, Simpson said. That also means helping teachers understand how to make sure their students are using AI in productive ways and not to cut corners or cheat on their assignments, he said.
Simpson acknowledged that Arlington is several steps behind other districts that have moved more quickly to adopt AI tools. But when the district is dealing with new technology that remains unproven in educational environments, caution is important, he said.
That’s especially true when the district is dealing with student data, Simpson said. School districts are responsible for making sure students’ personal data isn’t released publicly. Many AI platforms collect user-submitted data and use it to train their algorithms. Simpson said the district needs to make sure it only gives teachers access to tools that don’t collect student data.
Although there are risks that need to be managed, Simpson said the district can’t simply keep AI tools out of its classrooms entirely. When previous technological breakthroughs like the personal computer, the Internet and Web 2.0 reshaped the way society functioned, school leaders at the time understood that they needed to prepare students to live and work in that reshaped society. AI has the potential to be at least as revolutionary as those previous breakthroughs, Simpson said, so students need to understand how to use it responsibly.
NEW RESEARCH SHOWS POSSIBLE DOWNSIDES OF AI IN SCHOOLS
Other recent research sheds light on potential drawbacks of AI in the classroom. In a nationwide survey released this month by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, half of the students surveyed said they used AI tools for school-related purposes during the 2024-25 school year. Half of the students surveyed also said AI makes them feel less connected to their teachers. And seven in 10 teachers said they worry that AI weakens important skills that students need to learn.
Although about half of both teachers and students said they’d gotten training on how to use AI tools, the use of those tools appears to be outpacing the training districts are providing, said Elizabeth Laird, the center’s director for equity in civic technology. Only about 14 percent of teachers and students said they knew what to do when they encountered a problem with an AI platform. Issues with those platforms are well-documented, she said — they can be biased, and they sometimes give incorrect information — so it’s potentially problematic if teachers don’t know how to deal with those situations.
Also troubling was the fact that only about one in 10 teachers said their schools had given them any kind of training or guidance on how to respond when they suspected a student’s AI use was detrimental to their well-being. Among students who responded, about 42 percent said either they or a friend of theirs had used AI to get mental health support, and 19 percent said either they or a friend had used it to have a romantic relationship. Nearly a third said they’d had back-and-forth conversations with an AI platform. Laird said it’s worrisome that most teachers haven’t received training on how to respond if a student’s interactions with AI are causing them harm.
©2025 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
