Школы Мэриленда обязаны разработать политики использования искусственного интеллекта к началу учебного года

This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partners at Maryland Matters. Read the story at Maryland Matters. Maryland schools have a summer homework assignment: Establish artificial intelligence policies for their classrooms. They do have a cheat sheet of sorts to go by — the Maryland State Department of Education’s recently released AI guidance. The department has been working on its guidelines since fall of 2025, said Richard Kincaid, assistant state superintendent for MSDE’s Division of College and Career Pathways. The division worked with local superintendents, educators and lawmakers to set up guidelines that emphasize safety and help teachers use the technology to enhance learning, rather than depend on it, he said. “AI is not something that replaces the things that are happening within a classroom,” Kincaid said. “The teacher will always and forever be the subject matter expert for the content within a class.” The school districts’ assignment comes from the Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act, a bill that Gov. Wes Moore signed in May. It required the Maryland State Department of Education to issue its own recommendations and gave the school districts 120 days from the day that guidance was issued to get their assignments done. (The education department was ready. It had presented its guidelines to the State Board of Education in February, but waited to release them to ensure they abided by the legislation, Kincaid said.) Those guidelines include eight elements for schools to consider when approaching how and what AI tools will be used in their classrooms, including data privacy, technology bias and ensuring classroom instruction is still “human-centered.” It also emphasizes that school districts should clearly determine what appropriate AI usage looks like in their classrooms. Kincaid said the education department will continue to adapt its recommendations as the technology develops. The guidelines also say school districts must follow structured criteria from the department before approving AI tools and continuously review them for safety and efficacy. Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard and Montgomery), who sponsored the legislation’s Senate version, said the bill focuses on workforce development for students, in addition to requiring the Department of Education to create guardrails and provide teacher training. “Whether a student wants to be a nurse or a teacher or a mechanic or an engineer or if they want to start a business, they’re going to encounter and have to use artificial intelligence,” Hester said. “So the students need to know how to use these tools, and they need to understand the fundamentals of how they work, when to trust them and how to use them appropriately.” Many Maryland school systems have already issued their own guidelines for AI use and are beginning to try out new tools. Montgomery County Public Schools are focusing on using AI to support teacher tasks, while student use is more heavily monitored and is primarily used to teach transparency. In Prince George’s County Public Schools, some students have already worked with AI through several pilot programs approved by the school district. Scott Murphy, director of curriculum and instruction at Frederick County Public Schools, said the school system doesn’t need to make any changes to its existing AI policy to abide by the state guidelines. But, he said, it is planning to make some “upgrades” going into the upcoming school year, including forming a local AI advisory group to continuously monitor how the district’s guidelines are implemented and any changes to the technology. While the school system hasn’t officially endorsed any AI tools, Murphy said it is considering using Google’s Gemini through its already existing teacher and student Google accounts. In an interview before the recommendations were released, Mary Pat Fannon, the executive director of the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland, said she hoped the guidelines would consider the different needs and resources of each of Maryland’s 24 public school districts. “I think what we want as districts is we want some flexibility to be able to engage with our individual teachers unions, with our principals [and] with our communities to figure out where we are right now,” Fannon said. Justin Fauntroy teaches computer science and technology classes at Argyle Middle School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He said he wants a clear policy from the Montgomery County school district that lays out exactly how AI can and cannot be used in the classroom, and what the consequences for students are if it is used incorrectly. “It is a tool, it has its benefits, but if they’re not taught, then that’s where the problems come in,” Fauntroy said. Kincaid said the guidelines are “incredibly clear” on the non-negotiable aspects of the guidelines, including monitoring for privacy, bias and ensuring the tools meet educational standards. But, he said the state is more flexible about the individual tools school systems plan to use. The guidelines and the state law also require that educators are given professional development opportunities to help them use AI more responsibly in their classrooms and curriculums. Fannon also said that while many school systems have already included AI training into their professional development, it may be “tough” to fit in that training during an already limited time period. Kincaid acknowledged the challenge, but said it is important to ensure that educators are given the resources they need to help them make informed decisions about the technology. He said the state will make online modules to help “level-set” educators’ AI knowledge, but that it will be up to individual school districts to provide training for the specific tools they choose to use. Jing Liu, founding director of the Center for Educational Data Science Innovation and an associate professor in education policy at the University of Maryland, said issuing these guidelines are a good starting point, but it may be challenging to keep up as the technology rapidly develops. “AI is very different compared to prior technology breakthroughs [because] they are evolving so fast and they can do things that are directly different this month compared to last month,” Liu said. “[The guidelines] cannot be a static thing. It was to be very adaptive.”