In November 2025, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) convened a diverse group of policymakers, system leaders, educators, researchers, funders, and technology experts for the Think Forward: Learning with AI Forum in New Mexico. At a moment when rapid advances in artificial intelligence are colliding with longstanding inequities and structural challenges in K–12 education, participants came together to grapple with a shared question: how can education lead, rather than react to, AI-driven change? Through candid discussions and working sessions, the group examined where current AI efforts are falling short and what it would take to build a more coherent, human-centered approach to teaching and learning in an uncertain future. This white paper is the result of those discussions.
Participants identified an “efficiency paradox,” warning that unguided AI adoption risks making outdated school models faster and cheaper without making them more responsive to students’ needs. Instead, participants call for a coherent, human-centered approach that improves current practice while intentionally building toward new models of schooling.
Key findings include:
- Vision must lead tools. Without clear guidance from educators and policymakers, AI development has prioritized point solutions over integrated school design.
- Coherence matters more than novelty. Sustainable impact requires aligned policies, infrastructure, pedagogy, and technology—not disconnected apps.
- Human relationships are central. AI should operate in the background to expand capacity, not replace educators or reduce learning to efficiency gains.
- Policy and investment are critical enablers. Innovation zones, redesigned assessment and workforce models, and sustained learning agendas are necessary to move beyond pilot projects toward system-level change.
- Education must address two time horizons at once. Leaders need an “ambidextrous” approach that supports today’s students while redesigning systems for an AI-shaped future.
Ultimately, this white paper calls on policymakers, funders, educators, and technology developers to move from fragmented experimentation to coherent action—building future-ready schools grounded in equity, learning science, and what makes education irreducibly human.
