It’s been quite a ride for AI in education. This year alone, state legislatures introduced dozens of bills about classroom AI use; the U.S. Senate held hearings on protecting human judgment in schools; and teachers, unions, and edtech companies have been publicly hashing out where lines should be drawn. Patterns are emerging among researchers, educators, and policy analysts, and they look a lot like the principles Lincoln AI was designed around from day one.
Teach, Don't Just Answer
One of the greatest promises of AI isn't that it can generate answers, but that it can help students understand why those answers are correct.
When students simply copy AI-generated responses, they miss the opportunity to develop critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and confidence. A high-quality AI learning tool should act more like an experienced tutor than an answer key. It should ask questions, provide direction, explain concepts in different ways, and adapt to a student's individual learning needs.
That philosophy was echoed by New York middle school English teacher Michele Haiken in an Education Week interview. She explained that when students use AI, "their thinking is what is valued" and "student voice is what matters and what counts." Rather than accepting AI output at face value, students should learn to question it, evaluate it, and refine it through their own thinking.
“When in doubt, ask: ‘Is AI promoting critical thinking or replacing it?’ This question…has become a common phrase in my classroom. It ties into our ethics lesson and has sparked several conversations about how real learning often looks ‘messy’, how failure can be a valuable teacher, and what it means to learn through effort instead of shortcuts.” - Michaela Hahn, language arts teacher, Mason Middle School, Mason, Ohio, in Education Week
Lincoln AI is built upon that same foundation. Lincoln AI Learning Coach guides students through concepts, offers explanations, and checks for understanding, rather than producing a finished answer for students to cut and paste. This is exactly how educational AI should function. It should never be a shortcut to the finish line, rather a coach that helps students build understanding.
Keep Human Judgment Central
The U.S. Department of Education's “Handout: AI and the Future of Teaching and Learning” is explicit that AI should augment — not replace — educator expertise and student agency. The same principle resurfaced at a June 2026 U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, at which state education officials pushed for guardrails that preserve teachers' professional judgment.
Pull out quote: “AI can expand opportunity while preserving what matters most about education — human relationships and human judgment.” - Cynthia Marten, Delaware Secretary of Education and hearing witness
The most successful educational technology doesn't replace relationships; it strengthens them. Teachers bring expertise, encouragement, and professional judgment that technology simply cannot replicate. Parents provide motivation, accountability, and insight into how their children learn outside the classroom. AI should complement those roles by providing personalized support while keeping the adults in a student's life informed and engaged.
As our own Chief Academic Officer, Charlie Thayer, put it in a recent EdSurge piece, “The teacher always remains the editor-in-chief: approving, revising and applying professional discernment while the system does the work of noticing more and preparing faster.”
This approach gives teachers more time to know their students and respond to real teachable moments.
Safety, Security, and Privacy Are Foundational
An Education Week video on AI guidelines recently distilled a consensus that's been mounting: AI in schools must be safe, secure, and protect privacy by design, not as an afterthought. For most schools and families, trust in this guideline is just as important, if not more so, than the technology itself.
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As AI becomes more common in education, parents and educators deserve to know:
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How student information is protected
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What data is collected, and why
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When AI is being used
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Where human oversight remains part of the learning experience
Responsible AI isn't just about complying with privacy regulations. It's about creating confidence that technology is being used in ways that support students rather than distract them from learning.
The best educational AI platforms make these expectations clear; families and educators shouldn’t merely have to assume everything is handled appropriately. Every interaction should be guided by education-specific guardrails that prioritize appropriate use, protect student data, and keep learning on track.
“By protecting data privacy, educators can foster a safe learning environment, build trust in AI technologies, and ensure that AI enhances student learning without compromising individual rights.” - National Education Association “Student and Educator Data Privacy
Personalize Right
One-size-fits-all models rarely work in most contexts, let alone K-12 education. Today’s educators are acutely aware that a student-centric approach to teaching yields high engagement and high outcomes.
So, it’s not surprising that ISTE+ASCD’s Transformational Learning Principles features evidence-based practices highlighting the most essential elements of effective learning, including advice to “connect learning to the learner.” The organization encourages educators to personalize instruction using differentiation and technology tools to support learner variability, boost engagement, and promote mastery.
That tenet is at the core of Lincoln AI. The standards-aligned curriculum, upon which Lincoln AI is built, was designed by teachers for teachers and meets diverse learning needs and styles. Employing a method of concept spiraling and grade-level scaffolding, these courses are meticulously constructed to boost student engagement and confidence, while improving academic performance.
“To me, personalized tutoring is one of the most intuitive, helpful uses of AI.”
- Sarah Cooper, 8th grade U.S. history and civics teacher, Flintridge Preparatory School, La Canada, California, in Education Week
Build Literacy, Not Dependency
A recent Education Week piece on how students are experiencing AI differently — and whether that's a problem — lands on the same conclusion as ISTE's guidance: the goal is to coach learners to use AI thoughtfully and critically, not to default to it.
The American Psychological Association goes further in maintaining that AI threatens to disrupt learning when it displaces higher-level processes outlined in the ICAP framework — interactive, constructive, active, and passive levels. It advises to, “Teach students that idea generation, sense-making, and judgment is their job, while AI’s role might be to offer examples, perspectives, and feedback that they can evaluate.”
That’s what building literacy — not dependency — is all about. Because Lincoln AI is built to prompt students to ask questions, evaluate information, and build independent skills, rather than simply supplying answers, it encourages reasoning.
Students who learn to think critically with AI will be better prepared than students who merely learn to use it.
Looking Ahead
If there's one thing everyone covering this topic agrees on, it's that guidance itself is going to evolve. None of this is settled. Educators, unions, lawmakers, and edtech developers are still actively negotiating and refining best practices for educational AI. The organizations that will be best positioned for the future are those prepared to adapt alongside those changes.
As Education Week urged in its guidelines video, schools must stay flexible as the technology evolves. Lincoln AI was designed for exactly that kind of evolution, with ongoing product updates, dedicated client support, and continuous training. We've built our partnership model on the assumption that today's best practices are a starting point, not the finish line.
What's encouraging is that the principles guiding those ongoing updates are remarkably consistent across the conversation. The core values we've outlined are shared by researchers, educators, policymakers, and industry leaders alike. Lincoln AI was built around those principles before they became a broad consensus, and we intend to keep building as the consensus keeps advancing.