California: Capitalizing on AI in Education
In 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-12-23, directing state government institutions to utilize AI. These state entities are now beginning to move from the theoretical planning phase into the deployment phase with concrete plans.
The umbrella of California state government contains some of the largest public education entities by enrollment in the country: California Community Colleges (largest higher education system), Los Angeles County Office of Education (largest regional education agency) and California State University (largest four-year public university system).
All three have created goals and objectives to guide the process of AI implementation. We’ll take a look at each entity and the impact on IT opportunities in the market.
California Community Colleges
With 2.2 million students across 116 colleges, California Community Colleges (CCC) is committed to using AI to increase student success and institutional effectiveness. The ultimate goals are to modernize internal processes and online infrastructure while bolstering equity.
CCC foresees many potential use cases for AI including:
- Eliminating enrollment fraud through AI-based fraud detection and identity verification tools
- Harnessing data insights to automate credit transfers and transcripts, improve real-time analytics and identify actionable insights for improvement
- Improving academic performance, including with tutoring platforms with personalized learning support and predictive analytics based on student performance
- Deploying AI chatbots for real-time, personalized student support
Recently, CCC allocated an initial investment of $10 million to create a Common Cloud Data Platform that would centralize and modernize data management to vastly improve the student experience regarding progress tracking, program mapping, transcripts and credit transfers. CCC is planning on eventually inputting this data into a future LLM to create a dashboard for the Chancellor’s Office that highlights insights for operational improvement.
This innovative approach directly improves the student, faculty and/or staff experience while also satisfying compliance and privacy requirements. Vendors and partners can expect similar opportunity to expand for maintenance and continued integration.
Los Angeles County Office of Education
The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) oversees 1.3 million K-12 students and views AI as a technology that must be utilized as a workforce multiplier.
Rather than offering AI use cases for local education agencies (LEAs) to model, LACOE encourages LEAs to engage in discussion with staff to identify areas AI could aid in and then to independently run
pilot projects. This is not a top-down effort; LACOE is telling LEAs to identify what would work best for their exact situation and personalize the technology.
For example, Torrance Unified School District (TUSD) recently augmented its teaching and learning transformation efforts by first surveying teachers and students to gain a baseline of opinions on AI implementation and best practices, followed by the launch of a pilot program with 25 teachers to utilize an AI education platform to study before the planned implementation district-wide. Notably, while LACOE is actively encouraging AI usage, TUSD implemented it in the way it best saw fit and would most benefit the district.
By mid-2028, LACOE is aiming for 50% of its LEAs to report that 80% of students, staff and families are AI literate through training and resources. Implementing AI in education while also giving LEAs autonomy is a high priority of LACOE. This provides a strong opportunity for IT companies wanting to target school and district-specific solutions tailored to the needs of LEAs rather than the county-level Office of Education.
California State University
The California State University System (CSU) has more than 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff. CSU’s main goals for AI adoption include:
- Creating personalized, future-forward learning tools to enable real-world workforce readiness for students
- Empowering teaching and research with innovative technology
- Optimizing operations through modernized, data-harnessing internal systems
CSU is attempting to reach the widest possible audience, acting as a blueprint for institutions looking to create impactful, equitable AI tools and resources.
One key component of this strategy is the focus on being more conservative in deploying AI tech. CSU’s AI strategy states that its CIOs should not feel compelled to adopt all the latest AI technologies or pressured by the pace of innovation.
To that end, CSU has built ChatGPT Edu, a purpose-built chatbot with data privacy protections for faculty and staff, and the AI Commons Hub, a compilation of resources for students and faculty that includes AI tools, training and certification programs. Future ambitions of CSU include upskilling their students through private-public partnerships with tech companies to create a more competitive and technologically savvy workforce in California.
To appeal to CSU, vendors and partners should prioritize a careful, deliberate approach by emphasizing solutions that would best fit the existing and current institutional environment rather than a more advanced solution requiring additional infrastructure needs.
Industry Takeaways
California public educational entities want to embrace innovation for all while ensuring deliberate, slower-moving technology deployment with equity always at the forefront. The above three institutions — CCC, LACOE and CSU — are all eager to harness innovation. There will be a plethora of opportunities for vendors and partners willing to assist with carefully implementing the cutting-edge. Well-received potential tech solutions for these three entities would be data-driven tools for improving student, staff and operational success, from analyzing individual student metrics for a more personalized learning plan to using the technology for system-wide fraud audits. The aforementioned systems want AI to empower everyone by automating processes and harnessing large sets of information.
California shows that while public education entities often have overlapping technology plans, each has unique considerations. LACOE’s plan for LEAs to come up with and pilot their own strategies contrasts with CCC and CSU’s more top-down approach. Vendors and partners should heed this as a sign that there are different, non-uniform strategies and adapt accordingly.
Lastly, a unique consideration for California’s AI plans is equity being front and center. IT companies should emphasize how their solutions help expand access to opportunities and education for Californians while working with careful, methodical strategies planned to address existing modernization needs as well as those anticipated in the future.
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About the Author: Austin Gardner is a Discovery Rep on the DLT Market Insights team. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and lives in Washington, D.C.