Can artificial intelligence spark an education renaissance?

The Center for Reimagining Education gives students a chance to survive and thrive in the age of AI.

At a Glance

• Calls to fix problems in our schools usually lead to variations of the same reforms but little significant change.
• The limited effectiveness of past change efforts, the need for new skills, and the rise of artificial intelligence require schools to transform themselves.
• The Center for Reimagining Education helps schools and districts transform themselves in ways that go beyond typical models for change.
• Their approach acknowledges that one-size-fits-all reforms are ineffective because changes have varying effects on different groups.
• A school-within-a-school approach enables those who are interested in transformation to experiment in small groups.
• Giving teachers and students a voice in transformation initiatives promotes both buy-in and engagement.

After trying to improve how to cut string beans in a hotel restaurant in his teenage years, Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1985) noted, “I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world” (p. 29). The same is true in school. Real, transformative improvement has defied reformers for decades.

In every decade, there are calls to fix the supposed problems pervading schools and classrooms, but the remedies are typically reworked or enhanced versions of the very practices that created the reported problems in the first place. Scholars have cited a long list of reasons to explain why, including complex systems, wrong-headed policy makers, change-averse teachers, ineffective school leaders, obstructive parents, ill-conceived curricula, inadequate facilities and resources, and so on. Numerous publications have discussed these and other factors that limit schools’ ability to change (Beycioglu & Kondakci, 2021; Cuban, 2013; Goodlad, 1990; Oakes, 1986; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Yet changes must happen for schools to better serve our children.

Education needs a renaissance, and artificial intelligence (AI) may provide the kind of jolt needed. It could open possibilities for different approaches that could change roles for students, teachers, and leaders in ways that were only dreamed about in the past. And AI as we currently know it, with all the amazing things that are emerging, is likely dumber today than it will be at any time in the future. What it will be capable of in the future is anybody’s guess.

In every decade, there are calls to fix the supposed problems pervading schools and classrooms, but the remedies are typically reworked or enhanced versions of the very practices that created the reported problems in the first place.

We cofounded the Center for Reimagining Education (CRE) at the University of Kansas to embrace the future and take a different approach. Building on our analysis (Ginsberg & Zhao, 2023), the center recognizes that schools struggle mightily with truly reconsidering their practices or predicting the ramifications of reforms they often are pushed to adopt. CRE’s path focuses on possibilities and opportunities, using a simple but powerful model of change that relies heavily on practitioners and students working together, initially in small bits, to reimagine and implement new practices.

 Change is hard

All reformers or change-makers desire universal adoption of the changes they advocate. In every education system, policy makers, scholars, and individuals with good ideas want their ideas to be scaled up to the entire system and to make change that lasts forever.

But this is a fantasy. Schools are complex organizations that involve numerous stakeholders. Directly, they serve students, parents, teachers, staff members, school leaders, and policy makers. Indirectly, they serve textbook publishers, technology providers, facility maintainers, furniture makers, test developers, utility providers, insurance companies, after-school program providers, and many more.

These groups have different interests and desires. Any change initiated by one group could have significant positive or negative impact on others. Moreover, there is tremendous diversity within each group. Changes may benefit some group members but hurt others. We can safely say that there is no single change that benefits all people involved in education at the same time. There will always be winners and losers. Some people will be happy, and others won’t be.

Yet, at the same time, critiques and demands for change are ubiquitous. Everyone wants some changes to schooling. Some want to change how students are assessed; others want to change the curriculum. Some are unhappy with how students are grouped; others want to change scheduling. Some want to change textbooks; others want to get rid of homework. Some are unhappy with how teachers are prepared; others are critical of how students advance on the learning pathway.

Transformation is harder — and necessary

Changes can be big or small, but regardless of their scale and impact, only a few are intended to truly transform. Instead, most intend to improve aspects of what already exists, while keeping the basic structures of traditional education in place. For example, reforms to enhance test-driven accountability in numerous education systems over the past few decades are huge in scale and significant in impact, but they were only intended to force school leaders and teachers to more effectively and efficiently transmit the prescribed curriculum to students. Similarly, the debates about teaching pedagogy in reading and math are more about improving traditional practices than transforming them.

Today, we need transformative changes for several reasons.

First, reforms to improve traditional schooling have not made education better, enabled students to consistently achieve excellence, or closed the achievement gap. Results of the Program for International Student Assessment and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that decades of reforms have not improved student test scores in reading, math, and science in the traditional sense, nor have they narrowed the gap in test scores between advantaged and disadvantaged students. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develpment, 2023).

Second, for decades, scholars have been calling for schools to teach new skills for the 21st century (Trilling & Fadel, 2009; Wagner, 2008; Zhao, 2009, 2012). Since the 1970s, technology has advanced in ways that have displaced a tremendous number of human workers. Governments have responded and put these new skills in curriculum (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2010; European Communities, 2006). However, these skills have not truly found a place in mandated standardized tests or actual classrooms, because traditional definitions of teaching and learning remain focused on traditional content.

Third, AI has arrived and is developing rapidly. While schools have responded in some ways, the changes most schools are considering are far from sufficient. Numerous publications and conference presentations highlight how to improve current teaching of traditional content with AI, how to prevent and respond to students using AI to cheat on exams and homework, or how to teach AI literacy. Few have truly considered the possibility of what AI will be able to do when students graduate in five or 10 years. Even fewer have considered transformation of the familiar — undoing traditional classroom teaching, rebuilding the curriculum from scratch, and completely reconfiguring how students are assessed.

Schools have long been dominated by the one-size-fits-all mentality.

For education to better serve our students so they have a chance to survive and thrive in the age of AI, schools must transform. Transform what they aim to achieve, how they are organized, what is taught, how teaching and learning take place, and how students will be assessed and evaluated. Transformation takes time. It takes time for teachers and students to evolve beyond the traditional boundaries, but more important, it takes time for schools to evolve. Schools must be willing to give teachers and students time to imagine new educational possibilities and explore how to put them in place. 

The CRE approach

We built CRE to explore the possibilities of changes following a new model that builds on the failings of the past and envisions possibilities for the future embracing the potential of AI. It is based on three basic principles or lenses. 

True transformation – no more one-size-fits-all

Our first principle is to recognize the diversity of changes needed. The variety of stakeholders in education makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make big changes without touching — or even offending — the interests of others. So the concept of breaking the monopoly of one-size-fits-all is our most important doctrine.

Schools have long been dominated by the one-size-fits-all mentality. Every student has to experience the same expectations, same curriculum, same pedagogy, same assessment, same classroom, same arrangement, and the same everything. Sameness has been practiced for so long that virtually everyone accepts it and even considers it an essential standard of equity and equality. As a result, change-makers want their changes to apply to everyone, equally.

But one curriculum and set of expectations can never truly meet the diverse needs of all students, nor can it meet the needs of the AI-driven future (Zhao, 2018a, 2025; Zhao & Zhong, 2024). Moreover, placing students under the same curriculum and expectations leads us to rank students and select students based on how well they live up to those expectations, resulting in massive waste of human talents (Zhao & Zhong, 2025). The one-size-fits-all mindset discriminates against students with talents, capabilities, and interests outside the mainstream. In the new age, each talent or interest is potentially valuable as long as it is fully developed (Zhao, 2019; Zhao, Basham, & Travers, 2022). AI allows for personalization for all students in a manner only dreamed about in the past.

The CRE encourages schools to diversify their offerings and approaches to meet the needs of all children in transformative ways, to help each child to grow to their full potential. The schools we work with must agree to try truly transformative ideas, and we are specifically not interested in using any one new method or putting a new one-size-fits-all model in place of the old. 

School-within-a-school

Our second principle is the change approach we suggest: School-within-a-school (SwS). We encourage educators to create a micro-space within their school and carve time out of traditional schooling to experiment with transformative changes inside the micro-space (rather than forcing those changes on the entire school, staff, and students). The new school, nested in the traditional school, doesn’t copy the traditional practices. This makes it different from the small school movement that tried to turn large high schools into smaller ones where students would feel more personally cared for (Bingler et al., 2002; Wasley et al., 2000). Instead, the SwS is a space for innovation, while the rest of the community continues as is. The goal is to foster transformative changes for willing teachers and students. If successful, those changes should grow organically beyond the SwS.

The idea of an SwS is to alleviate tradition-based resistance. Schools have many traditions, including intellectual traditions and cultural traditions. These traditions become sacred norms and can become a force that works to derail any change that threatens them. The SwS avoids the need to convince the entire school community to break free from tradition and accept the change, thus limiting resistance. Unless forced under authority, attracted by some rewards, or scared of the possibility of punishment, it is unlikely for the entire staff, the whole student body, and all parents to be convinced to pursue dramatic changes. SwS allows changes to take place without having to convince everyone.

SwS also minimizes the impact of risks. No change is guaranteed to succeed. Big changes that affect entire schools and districts have a bigger footprint, and the potential damage is massive. No Child Left Behind is a powerful example. Its national implementation has had a long-lasting negative impact on American education (Zhao, 2018b). SwS affects a small number of teachers and students. Any negative effects touch only a small group. More important, given the small size of the group, negative effects can be more easily detected and corrected. 

Teacher/student co-creation

The third principle for CRE is that the changes must be proposed by local school leaders, teachers, or students. Teacher and student voice are essential, especially when using emerging technologies like AI. And the idea of co-creation with students is paramount.

Bringing students into the mix as creators in legitimate ways is atypical in schools, but we strongly believe that teachers and students can reimagine and create new learning experiences for students together. They also want to do so. What they need is encouragement and permission. Moreover, any change, if properly cultivated among students and teachers, could spread throughout the entire education system in an organic way (Zhao & Zhong, 2024).

Giving students a powerful voice in devising needed changes should strengthen their engagement in their educational process. We suspect that such an approach can alleviate student apathy and boredom. The support and guidance of teachers and others will be key, but, as any educator will tell you, it often is the students who are most comfortable with the emerging technologies pouring into the mainstream, not the adults. It just seems natural that they be co-creators in a transformative model for their education.

 CRE to date

CRE started working with three school districts in Fall 2024 with supportive leaders and schools identified within those districts willing to take risks, dream, and change. Through a generous gift from the Cinelli Family Foundation, we brought the districts together in cohorts for a three-year program in which participants learn to use AI tools as they follow the change model with coaching and support from CRE staff. Districts plan individually but work collaboratively.

The future of AI is unknown, but its potential for supporting transformative changes to schools as we know them is undeniable.

CRE created an online Exploration Station where participants can share their successes and frustrations, learn about new AI tools and how to use them, read the latest work being published about AI in schools, and further collaborate as they innovate. Cohorts get together a few times a year for AI training and collaborative work, both within and across schools in each cohort. District leaders, faculty, students, and CRE staff convene each year for a showcase where they display their work and learn from peers. It is powerful.

Six more school districts in two cohorts started this academic year. They’ve gone through similar onboarding. Other districts are joining individually, going through a four-year mostly online transformation process with CRE support and guidance. And CRE will be expanding the model to rural districts across Kansas in a revised, mostly online way through a new project supported in part by a 2025 grant from the Patterson Family Foundation.

Coming soon will be a series of AI literacy micro-credentials and training for participants on using AI  to become CRE Fellows. They can then work with others in the CRE network on bringing AI to teaching and learning. In addition, a set of certificates are being finalized for schools to pursue and judge their level of AI expertise, much like the LEED certification that rates the green or sustainable level of buildings.

The future of AI is unknown, but its potential for supporting transformative changes to schools as we know them is undeniable. CRE is working with willing change-trailblazers in a process that doesn’t disrupt the entire school system but embraces the idea that teacher and student voice and leadership are key for creating a future that meets all students’ needs.

 

References

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This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Kappan, Vol. 107, No. 3-4.