At a recent summit on AI in education in Cincinnati, a delegation of New York City education leaders sat among 400 educators and school leaders from southwest Ohio.
Why were they in the Buckeye State? To learn how the Big Apple can catch up to Ohio.
The visit highlights the significant strides Ohio has made toward building a statewide movement around AI in education—work that began in 2020 with a single district pilot. The initial effort caught the attention of state leaders, resulting in one of the country’s first-ever convenings of educators to focus on AI literacy.
Fast forward five years and the importance of AI literacy is clearer than ever. In late April, the White House issued an executive order, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” that establishes a federal AI Education Task Force. That group is charged with implementing a Presidential AI Challenge to advance AI in both education and in workforce development. It also prioritizes making available free K-12 instructional resources, teacher training programs, dual enrollment options, and AI-focused apprenticeships—all within an aggressive timeline of 90 to 180 days.
This type of urgent action is necessary to prepare students with the skills they need to thrive in an AI-enhanced world. It is a significant undertaking. The K-12 system in the United States encompasses 50M students, 3.8M educators, 13K school districts, 50 state education agencies, and 1.8M nonprofits.
Despite the size of the system, the recent push to shift control of education back to the states offers us unprecedented flexibility to take on this challenge. It gives states the opportunity to innovate, lead, and embrace new ideas. This allows for the implementation of strategies that are effective at the state and local levels, which can then be scaled for broader success.
Ohio exemplifies this model.
We recently awarded more than $1M in state funding to a coalition of regional nonprofit teacher training organizations partnered with aiEDU. This coalition also drew support from national funders to deliver teacher training to thousands of educators in every corner of the state and to host five AI summits.
With input from this network, as well as the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and the Ohio Department of Higher Education, the state published one of the most thorough sets of AI policy guidance and resources available in the nation. Ohio’s AI in Education Strategy provides guidance and recommendations for school districts, educators, parents, and local communities to ensure the state’s K-12 education system is equipped to be a leader in AI—a priority under the leadership of Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel.
As a nation, we must move rapidly from strategies to real impact on the ground. We need to create blueprints for how to launch successful regional and statewide efforts that advance AI literacy. Ohio’s strategy is precisely that blueprint.
Though early in its journey, Ohio is already inspiring similar efforts in other states, most notably in Colorado. The specific approach in Colorado is different, but it is anchored in the same combination of bottom-up and top-down coordination across the state’s education system.
There is still much work to be done, but this executive order is an opportunity to galvanize the country. It’s a call to educators, communities, the private sector, and Congress to act on one of the few issues with bipartisan support: workforce readiness and economic competitiveness. America’s future—and the next generation—depends on it.
Stephen D. Dackin is director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Alex Kotran is co-founder and CEO of The AI Education Project (aiEDU).