Maryland school districts face fall deadline to set AI policies

Maryland schools have a summer homework assignment: Establish artificial intelligence policies for their classrooms.

They do have a cheat sheet of sorts to go by — the Maryland State Department of Education’s recently released AI guidance.

The department has been working on its guidelines since fall of 2025, said Richard Kincaid, assistant state superintendent for MSDE’s Division of College and Career Pathways. The division worked with local superintendents, educators and lawmakers to set up guidelines that emphasize safety and help teachers use the technology to enhance learning, rather than depend on it, he said.

“AI is not something that replaces the things that are happening within a classroom,” Kincaid said. “The teacher will always and forever be the subject matter expert for the content within a class.”

The school districts’ assignment comes from the Artificial Intelligence Ready Schools Act, a bill that Gov. Wes Moore signed in May. It required the Maryland State Department of Education to issue its own recommendations and gave the school districts 120 days from the day that guidance was issued to get their assignments done. (The education department was ready. It had presented its guidelines to the State Board of Education in February, but waited to release them  to ensure they abided by the legislation, Kincaid said.)

Those guidelines include eight elements for schools to consider when approaching how and what AI tools will be used in their classrooms, including data privacy, technology bias and ensuring classroom instruction is still “human-centered.” It also emphasizes that school districts should clearly determine what appropriate AI usage looks like in their classrooms. Kincaid said the education department will continue to adapt its recommendations as the technology develops.

The guidelines also say school districts must follow structured criteria from the department before approving AI tools and continuously review them for safety and efficacy.

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Jing Liu, founding director of the Center for Educational Data Science Innovation and an associate professor in education policy at the University of Maryland, said issuing these guidelines are a good starting point, but it may be challenging to keep up as the technology rapidly develops.

“AI is very different compared to prior technology breakthroughs [because] they are evolving so fast and they can do things that are directly different this month compared to last month,” Liu said. “[The guidelines] cannot be a static thing. It was to be very adaptive.”