Key Takeaways

• Schools Should Lead the Way in AI Integration: There is an opportunity for educators to be at the forefront of developing and using AI for educational purposes. This can ensure AI is used ethically and effectively to benefit students.

• AI Can Empower Teachers and Students: AI tools can free up teachers’ time for more creative and individualized instruction. For students, AI-powered tutoring can provide personalized learning experiences and improve outcomes.

• AI Implementation Requires Careful Planning: Several factors are important for successful AI integration in schools. These include establishing clear policies, providing professional development for educators, and ensuring technology infrastructure is secure.

• Overcoming Teacher Skepticism is Key: Some teachers may be hesitant about using AI. School leaders can address these concerns by highlighting successful examples of AI in education and being transparent about both the potential benefits and challenges.

Dr. Scott Muri is the superintendent of Ector County (TX) Independent School District. He sits down with Saga’s editorial director, Dave Dadurka, and discuss integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into K–12 education. Dr. Muri implemented high-impact tutoring for nearly 6,000 students in the district using outcomes-based contracting and artificial intelligence. He was selected for the District Administration Inaugural Top 100 Education Influencers List. 

Dave Dadurka: What’s your vision for integrating AI into educators’ teaching and tutor practices in the district?

Dr. Scott Muri: Educational institutions have an opportunity right now and it’s going to pass us by pretty quickly. We have an opportunity right now to guide the evolution of artificial intelligence in our nation. My hope is that the educational institutions of our nation could lead to this movement and let it be a real positive opportunity for students, not only today but for years to come. 

With that in mind, it makes me, as a superintendent, think about the enabling conditions that a system needs to have in order to use AI effectively. One would be the policy environment – What are the appropriate policies that enable innovation and support innovation, but with the appropriate guardrails to ensure that we don’t delve into areas that might be harmful to children or harmful to staff? There has to be an innovation arm of the organization that drives the thinking around artificial intelligence, making sure that we are not only keeping up with AI but also that we are leading the innovation side of AI and that we use it to enhance and to accelerate the teaching and learning environment within our organization. I think there’s the safety side, from a technical perspective, and so on the technology side of this ensuring that our systems, our back-end systems are using AI appropriately. 

The other side of technology is to ensure that we have systems in place that we equip our students and teachers with the right tool sets to to leverage the power of artificial intelligence. We have to think about the professional development opportunities. And then how will we educate the organization at every level, which would include secretaries and bus drivers and teachers, because AI has the opportunity to affect all of us in very positive ways. And so we need to make sure that our folks are ready to receive it and then utilize it. 

DD: I’ve seen competing perspectives on how important AI literacy is for schools, given other urgent issues like students’ social-emotional challenges and academic recovery. What’s the urgency of AI literacy? 

Dr. Muri: I think there’s significant urgency. When I look at some of the other issues that will affect social emotional well-being of students, of which there’s a crisis with many kids right now, I think the opportunity there is to leverage AI to support the other critical needs that we have organizationally. So, it’s not one or the other. It is really leveraging the power and opportunity that exists within AI to help us solve and address other challenges that we face.

Yes, there is urgency behind AI literacy. When we think about the Internet and the advent of the Internet in education, we really missed it as educational institutions, primarily because we didn’t know or understand what the Internet was or its potential. And so we were learning at the same time our students were learning, and I just think from a digital citizenship perspective and a digital literacy perspective, we tripped and fell with the advent of the Internet. 

I see AI as another opportunity to either trip and fall like that. Or we embrace it, and then empower students and others with the knowledge and the skills to harness this new technology and use it in appropriate ways. We can’t miss it. And if we don’t seize this moment, then it will pass us by. And so this organization will not miss the moment. We’re on it. And I think all educational institutions need to be keeping pace because it’s here.

“…educators and educational leaders should be pushing this movement and guiding this movement and encouraging this movement around AI in our nation. We want to make sure that we seize the moment.”

-Dr. Scott Muri

DD: How do you anticipate AI affecting student learning outcomes and educational experiences? 

Dr. Muri: There is a study that we’re doing with Stanford University and FEV Tutors. In an effort to improve the tutoring environment, we are working with Stanford and right now leveraging, with several thousand kids, our tutoring platform. A kid accesses FEV Tutor, the tutor themselves poses a question to the student. The tutor provides the question, for example, what is five plus five and the student comes up with an answer and the answer is three. So, the AI analyzes the question to analyze the student response and then the AI presents the tutor with a variety of different ways that you could respond to the child. 

We have already seen, and we’re not publishing with Stanford until September, the data are already remarkable on how our student groups whose tutors have the AI, just how much they’ve improved versus the students who are tutored with tutors themselves who do not have access to the AI. And so it’s already fascinating. It is already proving itself to be of great benefit to the tutors and our kids are just winning. We are already seeing significant results from tutoring in general. But now those results are even greater. And while tutors are not teachers, they’re using some of the same strategies that teachers would do. 

When I think about integrating AI, we have teachers already using AI for some grading situations to provide that initial assessment. And then that information goes back to the teacher. The teacher can really focus on the creativity of the student or the critical thinking of the student. The AI can take care of the grammatical issues and other challenges. So, a teacher can use their brain power at their level and that the AI can use its power.

DD: What do you think are some of the steps that are necessary to introduce teachers and tutors to AI and help them understand its potential?

Dr. Muri: One is it always starts with a strong “why.” Why do I need to learn this? So one is the strong “why” and it’s all about continuous improvement. Organizationally, you have to lead an environment, whether it’s leading a school or a system, that is about getting better and continuous improvement. The “why” is always because I want to be better and I want to be better as a superintendent, as a principal, as a teacher, etc. And so I’m always open to tools or people or resources that help me be better. 

Part of it is cultural. Just setting that cultural environment that embraces the ability to get better. We also start with the “coalition of the willing” and so currently in our own organization, [AI] is not forced upon anyone. This is not mandated. You know, it is right now the hand raisers in our organization that are using the tools. And so that’s the place where we always start with the change process. And this is change. Innovation just requires a journey.

DD: What professional development opportunities do you see educators benefiting from in your district?  

Dr. Muri: We have some artificial intelligence tools. The tools are enabled by AI that are part of our blended learning environment. And so we have multiple schools in our district that use the teaching strategy of blended learning. And so, you know, AI is a piece of a much larger concept of blended learning. 

Those folks, they’ve already raised their hand and they’re already doing blended learning, so they understand it conceptually. And then they easily see how AI is helping them be even better in a blended learning space. And so from a professional learning perspective, we’ve been doing blended learning preparation for four and a half years, so AI has been a natural fit into that already existing professional learning space. 

The second thing is we have a team of digital learning specialists who are well equipped and trained with some of the tools of AI. They vet specific tools that use AI and then they introduce those to our campuses to our classroom teachers. That’s where we are and so these professional learning experiences are optional for teachers. These are available to those that wish to have them.

DD: Are there strategies that you use to address concerns or skepticism among teachers?

Dr. Muri: I would say we probably have more skeptics than we have champions, just because we’re early. Folks need to see AI used in very positive ways in the environment. And so we’re developing those right now. Some people have experienced AI, and they don’t know it. They may have even used it with their students that didn’t realize it and so it is pointing out the good examples that are happening in the organization, while also pointing out that the same technology that can be good on one hand can be challenging on the other. So, it’s being as transparent as we possibly can about the opportunities that exist with AI. So it’s okay to have resisters because they ask many times the right questions to help us really think through the challenges that we’re having.

DD: Any parting thoughts?

Dr. Muri: Two things are just critical when we think about AI. One, educators and educational leaders should be pushing this movement and guiding this movement and encouraging this movement around AI in our nation. We want to make sure that we seize the moment. So that’s important. 

And the second one is we need to think through carefully the framework and the enabling conditions in an organization that enable AI to be used effectively within the teaching and learning environment. That is multifaceted from policy to technology to professional learning. 

At the end of the day, we can’t miss this opportunity with our students. We just can’t. When I reflect back upon the internet and its advent into education, it was so new to all of us that we missed many teaching and learning opportunities. That just can’t happen to us again. Our students need to win because of artificial intelligence, and right now we have that opportunity.

Want to learn more? Download The District Leader’s Guide to AI to read advice from technology experts on integrating AI into your schools.