Q: What are the seven steps districts should follow in the K-12 AI procurement guide? A: The K-12 AI procurement guide recommends seven steps: define the learning need, run a pilot, protect privacy, demand transparency, check learning impact, price the total cost, and govern the rollout. These steps are designed to reduce risk, avoid hype, and focus spending on tools that help students learn. Q: Why should districts run a short pilot before purchasing an AI tool? A: The guide advises starting with adult sandbox testing and a micro‑pilot (1–2 classes for 1–2 weeks) to review outputs, teacher workload, and equity impacts before scaling. Short pilots let districts set clear success criteria, detect bias against English learners or students with IEPs, and keep teacher judgment central. Q: What privacy and data protections does the K-12 AI procurement guide say to require from vendors? A: The guide says require district ownership of user content and chat logs, prohibit vendors from using student data to train AI models, and ban selling or sharing student data while limiting collection to what is necessary. Contracts should include signed data processing agreements, completed security questionnaires, and offboarding plans for data return and deletion. Q: How should districts evaluate whether an AI tool improves instruction? A: The guide recommends aligning tools with learning science principles like spacing and retrieval, seeking pilot data or third‑party evaluations, and measuring impact during pilots with pre/post data and teacher feedback. It also stresses that tools should save teacher time, integrate with LMS and core tools, and support rather than replace instruction. Q: How can districts avoid “tool sprawl” and account for the true cost of AI products? A: The guide advises calculating total cost of ownership—including licenses, add‑ons, training, support, data storage, and renewal increases—and checking for overlapping tools to cut redundancies. Districts should start small, scale only if data shows gains, and include exit plans and performance clauses in contracts. Q: Who should be involved in procurement decisions according to the K-12 AI procurement guide? A: The guide recommends cross‑functional teams with curriculum staff defining goals, IT and security running privacy and integration checks, legal reviewing contracts, school leaders setting budgets and rollout, and teachers and students testing usability and impact. It also suggests an approval flow that includes legal, privacy, IT, curriculum, and school leaders before any tool is used. Q: What governance, training, and monitoring practices does the guide recommend after deployment? A: The guide advises setting access controls to block unapproved AI sites, providing staff training on safe prompts and spotting bias, and establishing incident response steps for breaches or harmful outputs. It also recommends transparency with families, publishing approved tools and purposes, and ongoing quarterly reviews of usage, outcomes, and equity impact. Q: What common pitfalls should districts avoid when buying AI tools? A: The guide warns against buying before defining the problem, skipping adult testing, allowing vendors to train models on student data, and relying on AI for final grades or discipline without human review. It also cautions against ignoring integration needs, accumulating redundant tools, and failing to plan an exit if results disappoint.