AI READINESS FRAMEWORKThe AI Education Project (aiEDU) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit devoted to ensuring that all students are ready to live, work, and thrive in a world where AI is everywhere.
We work with education systems to advance AI literacy and AI readiness through high-quality curriculum, professional development, and strategic partnerships with states, school districts, and other institutions.
With this mission in mind, aiEDU drives systemic change via three strategic pillars of work:
Define
By specifying what AI-ready students, educators, and districts look like, we create a common goal for the entire K-12 ecosystem.
Deliver
aiEDU delivers aligned curriculum, training, and capacity-building for schools to create repeatable models of systems change.
Catalyze
aiEDU catalyzes the movement for AI readiness by providing capacity and strategic support to nonprofits and other parts of the K-12 ecosystem. This ensures sustainable, long-term impact that scales beyond our own direct programs.
AI readiness is the knowledge and capabilities needed to use your own human advantage in collaboration with AI technology.
Define
AI readiness is the knowledge and capabilities needed to use your own human advantage in collaboration with AI technology. In other words: Students and teachers are most effective at using AI when they have strong human-centric skills guiding them along the way.
A student is AI-ready when they can leverage core subject matter knowledge and durable skills (critical thinking, teamwork, etc.) alongside AI to achieve their life and career potential.
aiEDU’s AI Readiness Framework instructs the design of our curricular resources, educator fellowships, professional development for teachers, and school district partnerships. Ultimately, our goal is student impact – all students should know the basics of AI, be critical thinkers, and lead with their human advantage.
For this year’s iteration of our AI Readiness Framework, we spearheaded research with the Burning Glass Institute about labor market data and K-12 graduation requirements. Our findings guided us in creating a student-centered framework for teachers, school leaders, and districts to more effectively build AI readiness and relevant skills that their students will need.
Since its release this past September, the AI Readiness Framework has been downloaded by nearly 2,000 educators across the country.
AI Readiness Framework has been cited by 87 organizations building AI Readiness resources for teachers and schools
13 State Education Agencies have cited the Framework: Ohio, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Florida, Georgia, Oregon, Washington, Iowa, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New York, Michigan.
Deliver
aiEDU partners with school districts across the country to help them prepare for an AI-driven future. The aiEDU Learning Team creates curricular resources, professional training workshops, and innovative fellowship programs to support teachers and administrators as they work to instill AI readiness in K-12 students.
This past year, aiEDU released five new curriculum offerings across two instructional categories:
Elementary AI Explorations: 15-minute classroom activities for grades 3-5, designed to help students engage with AI literacy and AI readiness concepts in tangible ways.
AI Snapshots: 10-minute activities for grades 6-12, each one exploring a current AI issue such as deepfakes in politics or chatbots giving inaccurate information.
Through the AI Trailblazers Fellowship, aiEDU recruits K-12 educators who are ready to build their own capacity for teaching AI literacy. The 10-week fellowship connects its cohorts to resources for building AI-ready students, including classroom exercises and a network of nationwide educators to share ideas and insight with each other.
The most powerful evidence comes from the educators themselves:
AI Trailblazers Fellowship Feedback
“I felt alone, you know, one to two years ago, I felt very alone looking at AI... It was great to find a community where I could talk to other teachers who were like-minded. We understood all of the great things that were coming out because of AI and how it could help our students as well as us in the classroom. And I didn't feel that really anywhere else other than in that community.”
— Stefany Palomba, 27-year science teacher, Canton City Schools (Ohio)
“I felt like it was a really good foundation to start to have some conversations with students about AI. And what I've noticed there is that that's like a snowball that starts rolling because the students would then start to bring up things... I am now the AI guy at my school because I'm talking a lot about this…One of the really beneficial parts of that Trailblazers program I found was it started to connect me with a bunch of educators that were kind of asking the same questions as me... I would encourage a lot of teachers to seek out other teachers throughout your state, throughout your community, nationally that are thinking about that same stuff too.”
— Connor Mulvaney, former science teacher & district AI lead, Polson High School (Montana)
“I think the readiness piece is so critical. Recognizing that before students need an opportunity to test drive a tool... giving kids language to talk about AI, helping students understand just the difference of artificial intelligence as the umbrella and generative AI is just one thing under the umbrella. The humans first over looking for ways to use the tools.”
— Mandy Johnson, English teacher, Anaheim Union High School District (California)
“This fellowship has been such a meaningful and energizing experience for me. It’s inspiring to be part of a community so dedicated to making AI education accessible, creative, and equitable. I truly enjoyed connecting with other educators and seeing how each of us brought unique perspectives to the work. I feel very aligned with aiEDU’s mission and would love to continue collaborating and contributing in any way that supports the organization’s growth and impact.”
— Dionna Rodgers, lead teacher, East Harlem Elementary School & East Harlem Middle School
School districts across the country are grappling with the fact that AI is already an inescapable part of our world, our economy, and our K-12 system. aiEDU partners with school districts to meet the moment, by building AI readiness for students and teachers.
Catalyze
This work reflects aiEDU’s role as a force multiplier for the AI readiness movement. Through systems-level advocacy and targeted capacity-building, we help turn policy momentum into sustainable, locally driven impact that extends far beyond our own direct programs.
In 2025, aiEDU’s advocacy focused on creating the systemic conditions for AI readiness at scale, positioning it as a core expectation of modern education systems rather than a niche innovation. Across this work, aiEDU consistently advanced shared priorities: embedding AI readiness across existing standards, investing in teacher professional development as an immediate lever for change, and enabling responsible innovation through clear frameworks rather than mandates.
We engaged decision-makers across the policy ecosystem, advising state departments of education, governors’ offices, and legislative leaders, including 30+ briefings, meetings, and testimonies with federal, state, and school board leaders.
Active engagements with policymakers and state education agencies in California, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Virginia, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
aiEDU launched the Community Catalyst Program in 2025 to directly support on-the-ground organizations advancing AI readiness in rural and indigenous communities. Supported by Google.org, the program provides funding and strategic support to local nonprofits and grassroots organizations working in rural and Indigenous communities, helping to ensure AI readiness efforts reach the students and educators who need them most.
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