What Educators Really Want From AI Tools
Key Points (for readers in a rush)
Based on 1,350 Ohio school health providers (May 2025) + feedback from hundreds of educators nationwide
Educators don’t want AI to replace them—they want AI that reduces paperwork
Most providers have no formal AI training; most learn informally from colleagues
Privacy and FERPA concerns are the biggest barriers
Practitioners want profession-specific, workflow-aligned AI tools
Districts should prioritize clear policies, role-specific training, safe workflows, and human oversight
Conversations about artificial intelligence in schools are accelerating. Districts are testing new tools, state agencies are drafting policies, and practitioners are trying to figure out what’s useful, what’s overhyped, and what’s risky.
To cut through the noise, I’m going to dicuss two sources of information that I’ve collected:
A statewide Ohio study of 1,350 school health and related service providers—including school psychologists, nurses, SLPs, OTs, PTs, counselors, and others—conducted in May 2025, and
Feedback from hundreds of practitioners across dozens of AI trainings I’ve provided to thousands of educators and school-based clinicians nationwide.
This post synthesizes insights from both perspectives.
It reflects not only what Ohio educators reported in the survey, but also what school psychologists, SLPs, OTs, PTs, counselors, administrators, special educators, and mental health providers across the U.S. consistently voice during workshops, PD sessions, and implementation consultations.
Preprints from this broader effort are already available for
This post offers a wide-angle overview across professions.
1. Educators Want AI to Lighten the Load
Across roles and disciplines, practitioners emphasized the same theme:
“Help me with the tedious parts of my job so I can focus on students.”
The most requested AI functions were:
Drafting or organizing documentation
Summarizing observations, interviews, and session notes
Simplifying complex, technical policy requirements
Generating intervention ideas
Creating lesson plans or structured activities
Helping structure longer written content
Notably, practitioners did not ask for:
Automated diagnosis
Automated eligibility decisions
Predictive risk algorithms
Fully automated psychoeducational or therapy reports
Across my national trainings, I hear this repeatedly:
Educators don’t want AI to think for them. They want AI to give them time back.
2. Formal Training Is Rare — and Most People Are Learning AI From Colleagues
One of the clearest insights from the Ohio dataset of 1,350 respondents:
Only a small fraction had received formal, district-approved AI training
Most training came informally from colleagues, not structured PD
Many practitioners reported learning AI through experimentation, social media, or word of mouth
This is echoed in PD sessions nationwide:
Educators repeatedly say their barriers aren’t lack of interest—they are lack of structure, guidance, and clarity.
Practitioners are using AI, but they’re doing it quietly (or secretly), cautiously, and often without clear workflows or guidance.
3. Privacy and FERPA Concerns Are the #1 Reason People Hesitate
Interest in AI is extremely high.
Actual use is much lower.
This gap is almost entirely driven by privacy and policy uncertainty.
From both the survey and national trainings, practitioners consistently express concerns about:
Whether district policies authorize AI at all
Whether “de-identification” is actually enough
What counts as student data
How to stay compliant when using chatbots
Whether administrators fully understand the legal landscape
Whether AI systems hallucinate or oversimplify student profiles
The most common sentiment I hear:
“I want to use AI, but I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Until districts provide clear, usable guidance—AI adoption will remain slow and uneven.
4. What Educators Wish They Could Use AI For
The Ohio data shows a striking difference between:
What practitioners currently use AI for
What they wish they could use it for if privacy, policy, and workflow issues were addressed
Across professions, the aspirational uses include:
Documentation Support
Organizing raw notes
Drafting progress summaries
Helping structure psychoeducational or therapy documentation
Ensuring required elements aren’t missed
Decision-Support (But Not Decision-Making)
Flagging inconsistencies
Summarizing complex data
Offering evidence-based intervention ideas
Suggesting areas that need clarification
Collaboration and Communication
Drafting clear email summaries
Creating student-friendly explanations
Supporting multi-agency or multi-disciplinary teamwork
Profession-Specific Expertise
Practitioners repeatedly say they want AI that “gets” their field:
The biggest message: Generic AI tools don’t understand school-based practice.
People want context-aware, profession-specific, ethically aligned assistants.
5. Insights for Schools: What Districts Should Do Now
Based on the Ohio dataset and what I see across national trainings, districts that want to responsibly adopt AI should focus on four immediate steps:
1. Provide Clear, Usable AI Policies
Educators need:
What tools are approved
What data can/cannot be used
When to de-identify
When AI is prohibited
A list of safe workflows
2. Offer Profession-Specific Training
SLPs, OTs, school psychologists, nurses, and counselors do very different work.
Training must reflect those differences.
3. Start With Low-Risk, High-Impact Use Cases
The data suggests ideal starting points:
Document editing and summarization
Planning and brainstorming
Administrative communication
Drafting low-stakes content
Clarifying policy requirements
4. Ensure Human-in-the-Loop by Design
Practitioners want human oversight.
AI should support—not substitute—professional judgment.
6. Why These Findings Matter
There’s sometimes a narrative that educators are resistant to AI. The truth is very different.
Educators are:
Curious
Hopeful
Overloaded
Undertrained
Concerned about privacy
Eager for practical, ethical guidance
This broad analysis—across 1,350 Ohio practitioners and hundreds of professionals I’ve trained nationwide—shows that educators are ready to use AI meaningfully.
They just need the policies, tools, and training to do it safely.
AI Use Disclosure
Portions of this post were drafted with the assistance of an AI writing tool and revised by the author for accuracy, clarity, and professional judgment.