Every Edition of the AI in Public Education Brief

On July 10, 2026, Illinois enacted Public Act 104-0565, barring an evaluator from using artificial intelligence to assign a numerical score or qualitative rating for any component of a teacher's evaluation, while expressly permitting AI to support administrative tasks. It passed the Senate 55-0 and the House 113-0, and takes effect January 1, 2027. The same week, Hawaii enacted disclosure and crisis-protocol requirements for conversational AI used by minors, and a peer-reviewed experiment found that the design of an AI report shifts teacher judgment even when the student work is unchanged.

On Monday, July 6, 2026, New York City Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels asked principals to hold off on educational software purchases until the Education Department finalizes its AI guidance. At a June 24 City Council hearing, officials could not say how many schools were using AI products or which ones, because purchasing is not tracked centrally. The same day, Illinois enacted Senate Bill 315, the first state law requiring independent third-party safety audits of the largest AI systems. New research: institutional AI readiness reaches students only through teacher capability, not enthusiasm, and four widely used language models changed their writing feedback for identical eighth-grade essays based on the student's stated race, learning needs, or achievement level.

On June 30, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2148, amending the California Education Code to define a public school employee and a contractor providing services in a public school as natural persons, the first clear instance of a state writing a human floor into K-12 education code. Parallel measures reach higher education in California and Illinois. The strongest K-12 evidence this cycle points the same direction: a preregistered 2,003-student randomized controlled trial of an adaptive math tutor found no overall effect, a 28-study systematic review finds positive but mitigated tutoring effects, and AI-dependence research links heavier reliance to weaker critical thinking, only partly offset by literacy.

On June 25, California released the model AI policy required by Senate Bill 1288, handing the nation's largest school system a state template; three days later, on July 1, Ohio's statutory deadline for every district, community school, and STEM school to adopt an AI policy takes effect. A model policy is a floor and a deadline is a due date, and neither by itself is governance. New research: commercial AI models do not mirror teachers' own views of AI, the newest classroom-design paper proposes a multi-year trial that has not been run, and a peer-reviewed Delphi panel agrees on only 8 of 23 statements defining AI literacy.

The U.S. Senate held its first K-12 AI hearing on June 16, and the witnesses asked Congress to fund teacher training and research and protect E-Rate, not to set a national standard. The K-12 AI Literacy and Readiness Act (H.R. 8747) and the LIFT AI Act (S. 4414) free existing federal dollars for AI without setting a floor. New research: AI-tutor access produced almost no use and no reading gain, teacher professional development is the lever that moves instructional quality, and a witness tells the Senate the long-term causal evidence does not exist.

Connecticut enacts Public Act 26-15, folding AI-inclusive computer science into required instruction and pairing it with minor-safety rules, while Florida's AI Bill of Rights dies in the House and New York moves to keep most AI out of K-8 classrooms. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis finds AI agents lift skills and knowledge but not, at significance, higher-order thinking; two studies find off-the-shelf LLMs are not grade-appropriate for younger learners.

Maryland enacts the Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act (SB 720, Chapter 634), making a non-instructional district AI coordinator a statutory mandate in every local school system and standing up a state AI Education Collaborative. New Mexico weighs a formal oversight body after its own analyst calls 2025 guidance non-binding. Peer-reviewed research: awareness and ethics, not technical skill, predict academic performance.

Pennsylvania AG files first state executive action against a consumer AI chatbot for impersonating licensed psychiatrists. Federal K-12 AI Literacy and Readiness Act would re-permission Title I, II, IV funds. Houston ISD quadruples Future 2 to nine campuses. Peer-reviewed PNAS: unrestricted GPT-4 caused 17 percent grade decline when removed.

Colorado SB 189 repeals its AI Act with a FERPA carve-out. The Lawrence Public Schools federal surveillance case advances on Fourth Amendment grounds. CRPE Early Adopters database shows tracked AI-adopting districts doubled year over year.

Michigan published a six-practice framework. Tennessee restricted AI from mental health roles with a private right of action. Two state actions, one convergence point for districts.

The largest U.S. school district closed AI guidance comment, three peer-reviewed studies redefined what AI tools must demonstrate, and the federal AI priority takes effect May 13.

FTC COPPA enforcement, a Florida criminal probe of OpenAI, and seven Tumbler Ridge lawsuits redefine AI vendor accountability for school districts.

Maryland’s AI Ready Schools Act, Stanford’s evidence gap, and the OECD performance-learning paradox converge on one governance challenge district leaders cannot defer.