Trending
Microsoft has kicked off a two-year ‘community of practice’ initiative focused on AI in education, bringing together over 150 educators and administrators at its Redmond, Washington headquarters. The initiative combines Microsoft’s Elevate Washington program with a Gates Foundation-funded cohort, aiming to accelerate practical AI applications across Washington state’s K-12 schools.
The event marked the beginning of a two-year ‘community of practice’ initiative focused on AI in education. Over 150 educators and administrators attended the kickoff gathering in Redmond, Washington. The initiative combines two separate programs: Microsoft’s Elevate Washington and a Gates Foundation-funded cohort.
Microsoft’s Elevate Washington program, announced in October, provided $75,000 grants to 10 school districts for planning and implementing AI projects. The Microsoft Elevate grants also include up to $25,000 for technology consulting services. The Gates Foundation is funding a separate group of 10 districts concentrating on AI infrastructure and data systems.
Participating districts are expected to share their learnings with each other and across Washington state.
The focus is on practical AI applications, such as AI-powered tutoring in Bellevue, K-12 literacy frameworks in Highline and Quincy, and chatbots for students and families in Kennewick.
In Issaquah, the AI project aims to help special education students cope with the psychological burden of moving between teachers with an individualized education plan (IEP). The Issaquah project was inspired by listening sessions with high school students receiving special education services.
Dr. Sharine Carver, Issaquah’s executive director of special services, stated the goal is to ’empower students, reduce that psychological burden and put them in the driver’s seat of really understanding their IEP and being able to advocate for themselves.’
Diana Eggers, Issaquah’s director of educational technology, noted that the IEP project goes beyond seeking efficiency to build AI for a new purpose, asking, ‘How can we use AI to reshape what we do?’
The 10 Microsoft grantees range from Seattle, the state’s largest district with about 49,000 students, to Manson, a rural district in Chelan County with about 700 students. Collectively, the Microsoft grantees serve about 17 percent of Washington’s K-12 students.
Jane Broom, senior director of Microsoft Philanthropies, who grew up in Washington public schools, told the group they are on the front lines of an unprecedented transformation. Broom described the pace of change as ‘the fastest change I’ve ever seen’ and said the last two or three years have been ‘pretty unreal.’
Broom pointed out a major gap in AI usage: more than 30% of the working-age population uses AI in the Seattle region, while less than 10% do in some rural areas. This disparity underscores the need for targeted initiatives like the community of practice to bridge the digital divide.
National research presented at the event showed that even the most ambitious districts are still in early stages and struggling to answer whether AI efforts are actually working. Bree Dusseault, principal and managing director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, presented findings from a national study of early-adopter school districts.
Dusseault’s team surveyed 119 systems, received 45 responses, interviewed leaders at 14, and profiled 79 districts for a database.
| Metric | Percentage of Districts |
|---|---|
| Have technical basics like devices and broadband | More than 80% |
| Have data privacy protocols and dedicated AI staff | About two-thirds |
| Have a formal AI policy | Six in 10 |
| Have any system for measuring whether AI efforts are working | Only 24% |
| Have updated learning standards to reflect new student competencies | Only 9% |
Every early-adopter district in the study trains teachers and approves them to use AI. However, fewer than half of early-adopter districts provide any training to students, and only 16% engage parents or families.
A separate RAND/CRPE survey from September 2025 found that 54% of students use AI for schoolwork. Among high schoolers, 61% use AI for schoolwork, according to the RAND/CRPE survey. Yet only 19% of students report getting any guidance on how to use AI.
About two-thirds of early-adopter districts are using AI to do what they already do more efficiently. Another 30% of early-adopter districts are using AI to support existing reform efforts. Only a handful of early-adopter districts are trying anything fundamentally new with AI.
The districts in the Microsoft program will work on their projects through the next school year, running through June 2027.
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution
Copyright PopularTechNews. 2024
