Texas AI in Education Task Force sets out four steps for K-12 AI literacy
The Texas AI in Education Task Force published four recommendations for K-12 AI literacy, in a state where 86% of districts report teachers already using AI.
Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels
The Texas AI in Education Task Force has published four recommendations for how the state should handle artificial intelligence in schools, in a paper titled “Leading the Way in K-12 Education: Recommendations of the Texas AI in Education Task Force”. The task force was convened by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin and met through the spring of 2026, holding its first in-person meeting on 26 March 2026. TACC has since brought the paper and its wider ALIGN K-12 AI literacy resources together on a single public hub, reported on 17 August by EdTech Innovation Hub.
The paper is authored by Ryan Torbey, Carol Fletcher, Sofía De Jesús and Allen Antoine, all of UT Austin, and lists 22 further named members drawn from school districts including Fort Bend ISD, Houston ISD, Leander ISD, Lufkin ISD and Corpus Christi ISD, alongside Dell Technologies, Texas PTA, the Texas Association of School Administrators, The New Teacher Project, Region One Education Service Center, Texas Tech University, UT San Antonio, UT El Paso and Angelo State University. The work is funded by Google.org through the ALIGN project.
What the Texas AI in Education Task Force recommends
The four recommendations, as stated in the paper’s executive summary, are:
- Establish state leadership. Texas should designate a leader with authority to coordinate a statewide K-12 AI strategy and convene an advisory board of educators, parents, industry representatives and policymakers. The paper argues that without central accountability the state’s response will remain fragmented across more than 1,200 independent districts.
- Issue statewide guidance. Guidance should cover responsible use policies for both educators and students, data privacy, AI procurement and student assessment, and should reflect the need for community and family engagement when local policies are created.
- Fund professional development. The state should invest in a coordinated hub-and-spoke initiative to build AI literacy across all educators and administrators, expanding the existing Texas Computer Science Pipeline network to address AI safety, responsible use and instructional integration.
- Update student learning standards. Texas should incorporate AI literacy through a phased approach to updating the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).
The gap the paper is built on
The case rests on a survey conducted by UT Austin with the Texas Association of School Administrators in autumn 2025, drawing 322 responses covering 277 districts, of which 80 per cent came from superintendents or assistant superintendents. It found reported AI use running far ahead of district policy.
| Measure (Texas districts, autumn 2025 survey) | Share |
|---|---|
| Respondents saying teachers use AI | 86% |
| Respondents saying students use AI | 61% |
| Districts with a student AI policy | 29% |
| Districts with a staff AI policy | 20% |
Source: UT Austin and Texas Association of School Administrators survey, autumn 2025, as reported in “Leading the Way in K-12 Education”.
Asked what support they needed, 40 per cent of administrators named policies and guidance, the largest single category, with professional development and training second at 26 per cent.
The paper also places Texas against national practice. It records that 22 states had issued K-12 AI guidance in 2024, rising to 45 states plus Puerto Rico by 2026, and names Texas as one of five states with no formal guidance, alongside South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and New York.
Scale of the problem in Texas
The paper argues that the size of the Texas system makes a coordinated approach harder and the payoff larger.
| Texas public education | Figure |
|---|---|
| K-12 students | 5.5 million |
| Share of all US K-12 students | Roughly 1 in 10 |
| Share of all US public school teachers | Roughly 1 in 9 |
| Independent school districts | More than 1,200 |
| Campuses | Nearly 9,000 |
| Teachers employed, 2025-26 | More than 377,000 |
| Administrators, 2025-26 | Almost 38,000 |
| Total public school employees, 2025-26 | 797,700 |
| Education Service Centers | 20 |
| Certified teachers produced annually | More than 15,000 |
Source: “Leading the Way in K-12 Education”, Texas Advanced Computing Center, 17 June 2026.
On standards, the paper notes that more than 1.5 million Texas students enrolled in a career and technical education course in 2024-25, about 92 per cent of the high school population, yet only three high school courses carried wording directly connected to AI. That is the gap Recommendation 4 targets.
The professional development recommendation builds on an existing network rather than a new one. TACC states that the Texas Computer Science Pipeline, managed by its WeTeach_CS team since 2024 and funded by the Texas Legislature, has served more than 1,100 schools and more than 4,800 educators, with reach in every Education Service Center region.
What ALIGN offers districts now
ALIGN, short for AI Literacy for Innovation, Growth, and Networking, is run by TACC’s Expanding Pathways in Computing team and started in Texas in 2025. It groups six components: the Texas AI in Education Task Force, AI Literacy Academies, Cyber and AI workshops, AI symposia, district AI guidance and strategic planning, and classroom lessons. Educators accepted onto the Cyber and AI workshops receive a $250 stipend, 14 continuing professional education credit hours and four ready-made lessons. The symposia are one-day events offered free through the Google.org funding. TACC has not published participant counts for the AI Literacy Academies, so the reach of that strand cannot be quantified from the available material.
The framework organises AI literacy around understanding, creating, evaluating and questioning AI systems rather than tool use alone. ALIGN describes itself as a national initiative, though the named task force, the symposia and the survey base are all rooted in Texas, and the published material does not identify activity in other states.
State and district responses elsewhere have followed comparable lines, as covered in earlier Winss reporting on Katy ISD limiting AI chatbots for K-6 students in the same state, on the OECD and EU AI literacy framework for schools, and on what award-winning principals see in K-12 AI.
About the Texas Advanced Computing Center
The Texas Advanced Computing Center is a research centre at The University of Texas at Austin that operates high-performance computing systems for open science and runs education programmes for K-12 and higher education. Its Expanding Pathways in Computing directorate works on computer science teacher preparation and access, and has managed the Texas Computer Science Pipeline for the state legislature since 2024, reaching more than 1,100 schools. TACC launched the ALIGN project in 2025 with Google.org funding to extend that model from computer science into AI literacy, running symposia, workshops and district planning support. It convened the Texas AI in Education Task Force in spring 2026 to produce state-level recommendations, and published the resulting paper on 17 June 2026, dated ahead of the resource hub now bringing the material together for districts.
Sources: Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin; EdTech Innovation Hub
Featured image: photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels (free Pexels license).
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I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.
