Teachers are swamped.
They’re working longer hours compared to other professionals, and their job-related stress often comes from managing student behavior, earning low salaries, and performing administrative work that isn’t tied to instruction, according to an educator survey by Rand Corp. released in June.
Furthermore, an April study by Pew Research Center also found that 8 in 10 teachers don’t have enough time in the day to complete all of their work. And 81% of those teachers said a major reason for that is they “just have too much work.”
As some school districts begin to pilot artificial intelligence tools, however, teachers could see some of their workload burden alleviated.
While not a guarantee, if districts are thoughtful about which AI tools and supports they provide to teachers, the technology has the potential to improve teacher retention by making the job more manageable, said Bree Dusseault, principal and managing director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. The research and policy analysis center at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College focuses on innovative, evidence-based strategies to improve public education.
Dusseault said she has noticed two different ways districts are currently using AI to support teachers. The first is by improving their efficiency in daily tasks like lesson planning and communicating with families. Another is by providing tools such as tutoring or translation services that help teachers offer personalized learning to students, she said.
Anywhere generative AI tools can help teachers focus on their core roles and feel most effective with students, “I think that increases just enjoyment of the job and a sense of satisfaction,” Dusseault said.
How one Texas district is leveraging AI
There are many ways AI can help human tasks that typically take three to four hours to be completed in an instant, said Ángel Rivera, superintendent of Texas’ Mesquite Independent School District. In the case of teachers, that means they have more time to focus on students, he said.
In his 38,000-student school system, leaders are hoping a platform owned and developed by the district can leverage AI to help teachers better understand students before they even enter the classroom, Rivera said. The name for that platform, AYO, comes from a Yoruban word meaning "great joy."
AYO’s components include a social-emotional learning mood check-in for students and a personalized learning tool and lesson planner for teachers, said Cara Jackson, the district’s chief technology officer.
The district first launched AYO in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, officials decided to relaunch the platform for renewed attention following the pandemic, Rivera and Jackson said. This also provided an opportunity to pilot newer features that use generative AI.
The mood check-in feature allows students to privately report how they’re feeling that day, which allows teachers to gauge students’ well-being in their classrooms. The tool can also more quickly connect students to counselors during the school day if they report a negative mood, Jackson said.
A newer addition to AYO this year is the lesson planning feature, which is aligned with the state’s curriculum standards, Jackson said. Based on AYO’s student surveys, teachers can better understand their students’ interests, and the AI tool can then suggest concepts for lesson plans based on topics that excite students.
“So AI helps inform, but the teachers — actually the humans — get to decide about the data that’s presented to them,” Jackson said. “Whether it’s about a student or whether it’s about a lesson … the human still has that option to say, ‘No, you know what? That’s not right.’”
Mesquite ISD is one of 11 school systems nationwide awarded an Innovative School Systems Grant from CRPE and the Walton Family Foundation. The grant program provides funding and resources to allow school leaders “to pilot, refine, and scale new solutions that aim to make student learning more joyful, individualized, and relevant,” according to the program’s website.
According to CRPE’s Dusseault, AYO was developed in part to solve an issue brought forth by counselors and teachers, who expressed concerns about low-student engagement and attendance. So the district worked with those personnel to figure out what kind of data they needed to understand their students and to do their jobs more effectively, she added.
“I think that also helps with recruitment and retention, when you’re using the technology as an aid to solve a really specific problem that teachers are saying, ‘Hey, this is getting in the way of my job,’” Dusseault said.
Risks and guardrails
While AI can help teachers focus more on their relationships with students, Dusseault warns that if the technology is not implemented well, there are risks that these tools won't actually improve a teacher’s job or benefit students.
For instance, she said, there are a lot of AI tools available to educators that aren’t vetted or evidence-based. The risk comes into play when teachers opt to rely on those AI tools instead of high-quality curricular materials and tools approved by the district or state.
In June, the American Federation of Teachers released guidance on “commonsense guardrails” to consider when using AI in schools.
It’s important that schools think about the concerns involving privacy, security, safety and equity with AI, said Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers and one of the people behind the AFT report. Those issues should be addressed before asking how to use it for building curriculum.
Freitas also said he doubts AI can be used as a direct tool for recruitment and retention.
“I don’t think AI is going to drive that, nor do I think people are going to leave one school for another over AI,” Freitas said. “Salary, healthcare, location? Yes. AI? No.”
Mesquite ISD also takes concerns about student data privacy seriously, Jackson said.
“We’ve had a lot of questions ourselves about it,” she said. “How do we ensure that the students get to continue to own their own data and that data stays with them and that we’re not exposing their data anywhere?”
Rivera also noted that Mesquite ISD has developed and closely stood by its own AI principles, which mention that “data is not shared beyond the student, teacher and parent,” and that “data will not outweigh decisions of education professionals.”
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