District and school leaders are feeling the pressure to “do something” as AI tools continue to flood the education technology market. Over the past year, Education First worked closely with system leaders across the country through the AI x Coherence Academy, a learning and coaching experience designed to help districts explore AI in ways that enhance rather than detract from teaching and learning while managing the overwhelm.
Whether their districts were big or small, urban or rural, we saw similar dynamics:
If that sounds familiar, here are three strategic actions your system can take this school year to approach AI integration with intention. These recommendations are grounded in what we’ve learned from working alongside district teams who, like all of us in education, are exploring if and how to best integrate AI into teaching and learning.
Here’s the headline: Districts that made meaningful progress didn’t rush to adopt the newest tools. Instead, they slowed down to speed up, aligning their AI work with district goals and real classroom needs while creating space for ongoing, iterative learning.
Every district in the Academy brought a slightly different team to the table, but the ones that made the most headway had one thing in common: they didn’t silo AI strategy within one department. They built teams that included voices from teaching & learning, technology, school leadership and the classroom.
This kind of collaboration illustrates what it takes to build and sustain momentum in this work. Cross-functional doesn’t just mean “more people in the room”; it means creating a space for shared ownership and a diversity of perspectives to shape how AI supports teaching and learning in your district.
“People support what they create.”
This year, don’t just name a team or task force. Give them protected collaboration time, a shared charge and decision-making authority so they can guide the work effectively.
It’s tempting to chase the next promising AI tool. The AI x Coherence Framework guides you to begin with a more strategic question:
What are the biggest instructional challenges or opportunities in teaching and learning that AI could help address?
The most effective districts didn’t try to solve everything at once. Instead, they created space to be nimble, embrace curiosity and learn their way into clarity. That started with defining 2–3 focused learning goals and use cases to guide their exploration.
Examples include:
Equally important, these districts gave themselves permission to say “no for now” to tools or ideas that didn’t align with their goals.
While the pressure to act is real, trying to do it all often means doing none of it well. A clear learning agenda becomes your north star to keep your focus and your resources on what matters most. It clarifies why you’re exploring AI, what you want to learn and how you’ll assess whether it’s helping.
“We learned about small term research sprints, which we then translated into what we call the AI Fellows program, where we really focus more on problems of practice that we’re dealing with in our high quality instructional material rollout.”
It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions, making disciplined choices and learning forward. This turns your AI exploration into a strategy and not a scavenger hunt.
By spring, all of the district leaders we worked with were receiving a barrage of cold emails and demo requests from vendors. The challenge wasn’t finding options; it was figuring out a way to sort through the myriad of options on the table to see which, if any, were worth piloting.
We encouraged teams to always begin by checking whether a tool aligned with a use case in their learning agenda. From there, the most effective teams put in place shared processes for evaluating quality and making decisions – including identifying who should be involved in tool evaluation, what evidence would be reviewed and how to incorporate teachers and students in feedback cycles.
Clear criteria were part of these processes, such as:
“When we started with AI x Coherence… we had the solution and were looking for problems that it can solve versus [now we’re] finding problems that are the most important and then asking, how do we use these tools to solve it?”
A strong process makes it easier to separate promising tools from the noise, gather the right evidence and make confident decisions. This ensures choices are consistent, transparent and tied to instructional priorities, helping districts avoid chasing the “shiny new thing” and instead focus on tools with a real chance of impact.
We are in a moment of rapid innovation, and AI will continue to evolve. The goal for district leaders isn’t to try to keep up with everything, but to focus on building the capacity and structures needed to explore AI with purpose and to empower people at every level, from the district office to the classroom, to help lead and contribute to this work.
That means:
Stay tuned for more. In upcoming posts, we’ll spotlight real stories from AI x Coherence Academy district teams so you can see how others are incorporating AI in ways that are strategic, responsive and grounded in real instructional priorities.
If you’re leading system-wide AI strategy work and want tools and resources to help you move forward, or want to learn about our SY25–26 AI x Coherence Academy cohort, please reach out.
