Shared principles and benchmarks for assessing AI tools and risks in K-12

• Context and Challenge

  As emerging technologies, including deepfakes, began to surface in K–12 contexts, schools and districts were encountering real uncertainty about implications for student safety, instructional integrity, and institutional responsibility. Guidance was fragmented across legal, technical, and instructional domains, and there were few shared reference points for decision-making.

  At the same time, school-based professionals were increasingly fielding questions and concerns related to technology-driven incidents without clear system-level guidance. In the absence of clarity, responsibility often fell unevenly on individuals to interpret risks, respond to incidents, and assess new tools on their own.

• Key Decisions and Actions

  Opportunity Labs convened experts across K-12 education, law, and tech to create public and actionable resources. Key actions included:

  • Synthesizing instructional, legal, and technical perspectives on emerging technologies, including deepfakes, into clear, plain-language briefing materials for school contexts

  • Designing and analyzing a survey of school-based social workers to understand how emerging technology issues were appearing in practice, where uncertainty was highest, and what additional support might be needed

  • Convening and facilitating cross-functional roundtables with educators, school-based staff, policy experts, and technologists to surface concerns, compare perspectives, and build shared understanding

  • Developing procurement benchmarks, surfacing practical questions institutions could use to assess vendor claims, data practices, implementation burden, and long-term viability

  Across this work, the emphasis was on slowing the conversation down enough to support clearer thinking, rather than pushing toward premature adoption.

• Outcomes

  This work produced synthesized insights, shared frameworks, and concrete decision considerations that shaped conversations about emerging technology in schools across institutional and public contexts. It clarified areas of risk, uncertainty, and responsibility, and identified where additional guidance or structure would be most useful.

  The work strengthened collective understanding of how emerging technologies intersect with existing roles, student supports, and institutional processes.

• Lessons Learned

  • In periods of rapid technological change, clarity and shared language are often more valuable than speed

  • When systems lack clarity, the burden of interpretation falls unevenly on individuals

  • Early questions about investment and procurement can shape how institutions approach new tools, even before formal decisions are made

• My Role

  I contributed to early-stage sense-making and framing work, with a focus on research, synthesis, and translation across domains. This included shaping survey instruments, synthesizing findings, articulating investment considerations, and supporting procurement-related thinking to help make emerging technology issues more legible for school systems.