(The Center Square) – Louisiana education officials are weighing how — and how much – the state should police artificial intelligence in classrooms, as a Board of Elementary and Secondary Education panel laid out competing governance models that largely preserve local control while trying to standardize basic safety and quality checks.
At a recent BESE meeting, the AI Work Group presented a slate of “deliverables” aimed at “establishing criteria for a state-approved clearinghouse of vetted AI tools to ensure safe and effective classroom use.”
The group outlined three paths: building a state-run, two-tier clearinghouse of vetted tools; creating a statewide vetting framework districts would apply locally without a state-approved vendor list; or adopting a hybrid approach that requires local vetting while adding targeted state reporting for “high-impact” AI implementations.
The Louisiana Department of Education did not endorse a specific option, but officials emphasized they are prioritizing district decision-making over statewide mandates.
“We think that districts are generally good at working together and communicating,” Ashley Townsend, the department’s assistant superintendent of policy and governmental affairs, told The Center Square. “We want districts to be smart and we’re here to understand how we can support districts.”
Townsend added the department does not want to “mandate things,” and that school systems are generally responsible for how they procure AI tools and whcih platforms they use.
The discussion comes as Louisiana cautiously expands its use of AI in schools. The state recently authorized roughly $1 million in federal funds for student accounts tied to three AI platforms: Amira, Khanmigo and Writable. The platforms are being used as education supplements, while officials warn that AI adoption should not undermine the state’s recent gains in literacy and math.
Alongside governance questions, the education department is scaling up teacher training and guidance. The state’s Teacher Leader Summit is expected to draw about 7,000 educators with more than a dozen sessions focused on helping teachers teach AI. The work group also advised developing teacher competencies that include “target skills” to apply across content areas such as English.
Some advocates urged the state school board and educators to reframe how they talk about AI use in schools.
“We have to stop pretending like it is wrong for people to use AI to do their jobs,” said Anthony Owen, a work group member and Code.org’s head of policy and president of the Code.org Advocacy Coalition.
Owen said the conversation should move beyond whether students are using AI to cheat and instead focus on broader, more practical questions while guarding against risks such as “cognitive offloading” and other “meta cognitive issues.”
