Is AI going to transform education—or compound the gaps we already have?

On this episode of AmpED to 11, we sit down with Aaron Cuny, co-founder of AI for Equity and former school leader, who's working at the front lines of this very question. From his 18 years inside classrooms and school systems to founding a nonprofit helping districts navigate AI with vision and ethics, Aaron brings grounded urgency to a conversation many are still only tiptoeing around.

What’s at stake? Everything from how we train our teachers and select edtech tools, to how we redefine curriculum, equity, and leadership in the age of acceleration. Aaron doesn’t just talk trends—he builds roadmaps. He shares how AI for Equity is helping C-suite education leaders tackle both tactical realities and strategy, and why sustained relationships (not one-off AI 101 workshops) are the key. You'll hear stories from districts like DREAM Charter and Ednovate—one that went all in early, the other that quietly built a culture of innovation from the inside out.

And maybe most provocatively: Aaron argues that without intentional leadership, AI might not close the opportunity gap but widen it. Cue the skeptics? He hears you—and offers practical, human-centered change management strategies for leaders navigating resistant staff.

What you’ll learn:

• Bold leadership starts with ethical clarity—not buzzwords or hype.
• Why tactical know-how is mission critical for AI strategy.
•  How top districts are piloting AI with purpose and accountability.
• The real investment gap: Not tools, but capacity building.
• Change management is 3x more important than any AI tech stack.
• Why Aaron is done with the word “transform”… and what he’s replacing it with.

With hosts Brett Roer and Rebecca Bultsma guiding the conversation, this episode is both a compass and a call to action.

Tune in, subscribe, and share if you’re ready to turn up the volume on what’s possible in education.

Aaron Cuny: And what is that shifting line between where there is opportunity and where there is limitation?

Brett Roer: Welcome everyone to today's episode of the AmpED to 11 podcast. We are honored to have today's guest, Aaron Cuny, who's gonna be speaking, let's say about ethical leadership and building AI for equity and education. I'm joined by my incredible podcast co-host, Rebecca bma. Rebecca, how are you doing today?

Brett Roer: Well, we'd have to put that in if we're speaking to Aaron Cuny. So Aaron, welcome to today's episode. How are you doing today?

Aaron Cuny: I am doing well. Glad, glad to be here and thanks for the opportunity to speak with you guys.

Brett Roer: Yeah. So for today's listeners, just in case you, you're no wondering why this isn't one of our marathon hour long sessions. Uh, Aaron has a 6-year-old who just recently had a, a medical procedure, so we're gonna make sure we get him back to that child, uh, you know, in, in the near future.

Brett Roer: So we're gonna jump right in if that's okay. Aaron, that sound good to you?

Aaron Cuny: Yeah, let's do it.

Aaron Cuny: And I remember having this moment where. I sent an email to the co-founder of, of the charter school that I had, I had co-founded, and I said, oh, hey, here's this really interesting, you know, technology and here's a great use case for schools. And then, you know, within a few days, I think I had replied to that same email 20 times with all of these use cases that just, it became this waterfall and.

Aaron Cuny: And really positioning them to be exemplars that the rest of the ecosystem can learn from, uh, as we go forward.

Rebecca Bultsma: So what are some of the specifics of exactly what you do with schools when you work with them. This example of, of innovative school systems you work with, what, what do typical days and weeks and months look like?

Aaron Cuny: We see school system leaders as the key levers for change. As we think about, you know, who are the folks who are setting the vision, who, who's managing the budget, and guiding a resource allocation. Who's making decisions about what gets time on the leadership agenda? What gets time on Friday afternoon during teacher professional development?

Aaron Cuny: And so. Kind of what that looks like, you know, structurally is we facilitate virtual communities of practice on a monthly basis, and we do that for role-based groups. So we have a group of AI quarterbacks who, who we convene senior instructional leaders, senior talent leaders, and then we have a data it and operations group.

Aaron Cuny: So we are not looking to do like AI 1 0 1. Over and over with new groups of school systems. But rather we were trying to support a set of the top innovators longitudinally over time so we can get kind of deeper and deeper and peel back the layers of, of what it looks like to innovate. So we, we convene these folks virtually once a month and we address both the strategic side of the work across all of those functions.

Aaron Cuny: So we, you know, we spend time talking about. The AI adoption curve and thinking about systems for pilots. But we also spent a lot of time looking at, you know, demos of how products are evolving in the ed tech market, how the foundational models are evolving, um, and you know, what the implications of those are for school-based work streams.

Aaron Cuny: So we try to kind of split time between the strategic. The tactical, you know, all towards the goal of making sure that the folks that we're supporting are really positioned to be great decision makers about both opportunity and risk.

Rebecca Bultsma: What are some of the things that you teach them or that you talk about?

Aaron Cuny: In terms of ma like being good decision makers in the product marketplace, our leaders are coming to us with content expertise. So, you know, our, I, I think about like our talent. Community of practice, they know talent work really well.

Aaron Cuny: These are, you know, generally folks who are in senior talent positions in strong school systems around the country. Um, and we are kind of in, in tactic on the tactical side. We are engaging them in exploring how AI can be leveraged in talent workflows, how, you know, we're teeing up opportunities for them to share with the community.

Aaron Cuny: And so we, you know, be, because we, I think, have the, these longitudinal relationships and it's a conversation that we get to re revisit each month. We have folks who, you know, will learn about something one month and go out and try it the next month and they'll come back and say, Hey, this is actually getting some traction in our community.

Aaron Cuny: We're, we're starting to, you know, leverage the technology in, in this way. And we, we find that, you know, it's what we're getting back is quality and it's reliable. Or conversely, you know, we'll tee something up or someone will hear about something from a peer and they'll go out and try it. They'll come back the next month and say, actually, like, this seems like this is a little bit more hype than, than substance.

Brett Roer: Aaron, first of all, thank you for, you know, guiding today's leaders, right? It's a really challenging time to lead. AI has created opportunity, but also, you know, with the lack of guidance and support, it can feel even more difficult than ever. So just wanna say thank you for supporting these leaders through this time.

Brett Roer: I'd love it if you're willing to, you know, for our listeners out there. Whether it's someone who's longitudinally, been you've been supporting, or someone you've recently been supporting, could you maybe share like one anecdote of a, of a specific school or a specific leader who's really, um, blossomed or created something really impactful that you'd love to share today?

Brett Roer: Uh, with our audience.

Aaron Cuny: Um, and I think they're an example of a network that's, I think led in a really innovative way because of the conviction Oliver's leadership on this, this topic, and. So many of the, we have a leadership roadmap that involves, you know, vision setting and making sure you've got clear roles and responsibilities around AI and facilitating an AI task force and amplifying power users.

Aaron Cuny: Um, and you know, when, when Dream joined our community of practice, I would say AI was not necessarily something that was maybe on their radar. This the radar, the senior leadership in the same way that was the case. With Innovate in, in Southern California, but I think they, they, their senior leadership recognized quickly that this was a topic that deserved some attention and deserves some time on the leadership agenda.

Aaron Cuny: And the, their network, I think, has really just developed a strong culture around innovation in general over the last couple of years and kind of more, more narrowly as it relates to ai. Um. And that has allowed them to, and like we have seen, that can trickle down to all levels of the organization in terms of the, the buy-in for leveraging the technology, the buy-in for exploring on, just like from a frontline standpoint, exploring how AI can get leveraged to create, you know, more efficiencies and effectiveness in workflows from, from the talent team.

Aaron Cuny: You know, if we think about, if we were to, you know, survey district leaders across the country and ask them about what are, you know, what are your top goals right now? It's probably gonna be some combination of some goals around academic, you know, outcomes and retention of top leaders, you know, retention of top teachers.

Brett Roer: Excellent. I think just wanna highlight what you just said. Obviously you're working with leaders and it sounds like the leaders that are, uh, benefiting from uh, your organization are the ones who recognize they've already set goals, they already know their community well enough to know where they need to get to.

Brett Roer: They're using, you know, the, the wisdom they're gathering from you to recognize AI is the tool that can help them reach those goals. Maybe quicker, maybe at a higher level of success, but it is the tool and the vessel to reaching goals that they've already defined. So that's, that's great that you're, you know, you're really empowering them there.

Brett Roer: And yet you also now have a budget crisis that, um, is many years in the making. And it's a, a number of factors are attributing to that and school districts and states are really struggling. So. This is probably something everyone's gonna wanna pay attention and listen to, but Aaron, in your area of expertise, what are some of the major gaps that states, um, private institutions, philanthropy should be funding?

Brett Roer: And then are there any out there that you wanna highlight that people should know about and start taking advantage of if they exist?

Aaron Cuny: Appreciate that, that question because I think that people will follow the money, right? And so if funders and states are saying this is the thing that we think is most important, then I think that's gonna inform, you know, how the market evolves.

Aaron Cuny: For example, like. What are the future of ELA learning outcomes in a world where. Adults in the labor market are leveraging AI for reading and writing, you know, in the ways that we are starting to see now. So I think there are just profound implications for the, the future of curriculum instruction. And then the other category we think about are is just AI's implications for how students are showing up to us acculturated into this world of ai in the same way that.

Aaron Cuny: Proportionally, I think less funding and investment go into the human capital capacity building work that we think is foundational to a healthy, healthy market. So I was a economics major back in the day, and you know, one of the things you learn is that markets function really well when you have an informed demand.

Aaron Cuny: And I would say that is the demand side. Sufficiently informed are, are they sufficiently informed consumers and discriminating consumers of the technology yet? No, I do not think that that is the case. So we've seen lots of investment go into tech and tools, but I think proportionally we have underinvested in human capital and pot positioning those school system leaders to be the discriminating consumers that they need to be.

Aaron Cuny: The other place that I think we've just under invested in is work that is getting at what the future of curriculum and instruction looks like. Um, I've heard very little about rethinking standards. We've heard very little about rethinking what the next generation of HQIM looks like. You know, the, the.

Aaron Cuny: The ELA curriculum that is gonna serve kids well over the next decade, and that aligns with the competencies they're gonna need to have to succeed in the workplace like that. Today's ELA curriculum maybe gets at some of that, but certainly there's huge gaps. And so I think we need more funding to rethink what learning outcomes we need to prioritize.

Rebecca Bultsma: And let's pretend that you had the power to ban three over hyped buzzwords related to ai. What would they be?

Aaron Cuny: Transform. Transform, transform.

Rebecca Bultsma: I, it, it make the list as long as you want. We should share notes. My list is getting long and I appreciate that you're not using a lot of them, but I'm just curious what you're seeing, what you're hearing. And I know you have a list.

Aaron Cuny: I, well, I would just say I think if you've worked in schools long enough, you know that change happens gradually.

Aaron Cuny: And so. I think we do this work at AI for equity because we believe if we don't position school system leaders who are serving kids furthest from opportunity to be good decision makers on AI to, to capitalize on the opportunities to manage the risks, then AI could be something that exacerbates the achievement gap or the opportunity gap.

Aaron Cuny: You know, magical technology. I think we'll be able to drive in our school systems.

Brett Roer: All right, first of all, Rebecca, thank you. Oh, Rebecca, I feel like I just watched a light bulb go off over your head. What are you thinking?

Rebecca Bultsma: Actually, I was just wondering when he was talking about kind of all the exciting things I, the light bulb you probably saw was, I was just wondering, like, I'm always curious about this too.

Rebecca Bultsma: Oh, that was a good one.

Brett Roer: I wanted to ask similarly to Rebecca, I really liked how she really got, she really got you to think of three words and I think that really, I, I enjoy like hearing exactly right. It really made you narrow your focus for a second. So something I also think about like. AI tools, AI rollouts initiatives in schools.

Brett Roer: Best piece of advice you need to take right now as you continue through the 25 26 school year?

Aaron Cuny: Yeah, so I would say to the, to the folks that are building, building products, I think by this point everybody gets that they, you know, they need to be engaging their end users and, you know, I, I doubt that there's an EdTech, you know, builder out there who doesn't have, you know, some group of educators who they're engaging with around the product.

Aaron Cuny: Engaging, let's say very discriminating instructional leaders in high performing school systems. So if I, if I was building a product right now, I would go to, I would find the highest performing school systems in the country and I would go find the very best instructional leaders in those systems. Um, and those would be the people.

Aaron Cuny: To the question of like, what, what's the top advice I would have for school system leaders? I think you need a clear roadmap. And while this is an emergent technology and you know, we're, we are all, we're building, building the plane as we're flying it, there are roadmaps out there. You know, we, we just launched something called AI Innovation Index.

Aaron Cuny: So we have a roadmap that is, you know, a part of that initiative that we're, you know, seeking to, to scale broadly. But I think if you're a senior school system leader, you need a roadmap. You need to get really clear. Maybe the most important thing is making sure that there's clarity around decision rights and ownership.

Aaron Cuny: There's, you know, clear designation of roles and responsibilities and, and in the best cases, maybe some clear clarity around decision rights. But AI is this new thing, and most school systems, I think, haven't yet brought clarity to who is owning various aspects of the work. Who gets to weigh in, who approves high stakes decisions?

Aaron Cuny: And so when you don't have that clarity. Folks are just gonna kind of, sometimes the work just is not gonna happen. Or if it does happen, it's gonna happen dysfunctionally because, you know, this group thinks that it should be their decision and this other group thinks it should be their decision. So I think you gotta bring clarity to leadership.

Aaron Cuny: But you know how, I think we, we'll, we'll see various iterations of. How school systems want to leverage this technology. But I think that that kind of fundamental, you know, we talk about it as like leader condition setting work. Like the C-suite needs to be setting the condition for the work to proceed kind of functionally in the way that other work streams are already set up for, um, in most school districts right now.

Rebecca Bultsma: That it should not be used in education or they're not interested in learning it and changing teaching practice. What are your messages or your strategies when you are either coaching leaders to work with people like that on their staff? I don't know if you get any of those leaders that you end up working with, but how are you navigating that?

Rebecca Bultsma: Because I'm finding that's people are settling into more like two specific camps these days and it's harder and harder to bring people along who absolutely do not want to be brought along.

Aaron Cuny: Yeah, I, great question. And I think it definitely strikes at the heart the leadership, one, leadership challenge around AI right now in, in school systems.

Aaron Cuny: Many of those same strategies for how they might, uh, you know, approach the rollout of a, of a, the science of reading, let's say. You know, you're gonna have, if, if we, you know, go back maybe 3, 4, 5 years before the science of reading had really picked up traction. Uh, you know, there were folks in schools who are antagonistic to, uh, to this and, and, you know, still, still today.

Aaron Cuny: But I think the school system leaders who are leading that change, were thinking about. How do we leverage the folks who are enthusiastic about this and who are bought in? How do we peel off, like what's the next layer of work that allows us to peel off some of the folks in the middle and bring them into the camp of those who are bought in?

Aaron Cuny: Uh, and so, you know, you have to be, I think, really intentional about how you're empathetic to and addressing the needs and slowly working to cultivate the buy-in of, of folks on that end of the continuum as well. So we, we had, just to, to give you like a concrete example, we, in one of our convenings last fall.

Aaron Cuny: We had kind of broken out these various groups and we had a planning template for our leaders to go through and actually list out some of the leaders in the organization who. In their organization who they thought fell into each of these buckets. And then we had a list of strategies, like very concrete strategies for what to do with each group.

Brett Roer: You know, Aaron, one thing I just wanna highlight that you said that's great is just like in any other pedagogical initiative, you know, you've named a couple, you know, science of Reading, for example. You're not trying to get every educator. In the entire district to try 20 things the next day in their classroom.

Brett Roer: You're trying to explain what are all the different options and what are the pedagogical best practices, but then let's really drill down on what's the most relevant that you can personalize for you and your students. Like you just mentioned, taking all these tools and really applying a few practices, so that's a great methodology that I find sometimes educators I think are like so nervous they see everything.

Brett Roer: So you're hearing some of a combination of those two. But Aaron. Uh, you are now the host of the AmpED to 11 podcast. You have the incredible AI ethicist, Rebecca Bultsma as one of your guests, and then this other guy, Brett, that she, let's come on things with her. What is your question That you are burning? You cannot wait to ask us.

Brett Roer: You've been waiting this whole podcast and you're like, when will it be my turn? It is here, Aaron, go ahead.

Aaron Cuny: In thinking about both, you know, leader leadership shown addressing both AI's opportunities and risks, like where are there, where have you encountered C-level leadership that you think you, you would put at the, you know, the, the top of the, top of the continuum of folks who are really getting it right.

Brett Roer: I'm gonna name a few and just highlight like one thing I'm so impressed by the work they do. One is here in the, uh, greater New York City region is Alana Winnick over at Botanical Hills. The thing I'm most impressed by in her work is, um, how much student voice plays a role in her district and how they've now taken that role, the students, and they've been able to speak at conferences virtually around the world.

Brett Roer: Such a novel approach that, uh, is very replicable and would be amazing to see more schools adopt that. So reach out to Alana Winnick, uh, for that one. Someone I just recently reconnected with, uh, in October at EdTech Week in New York City is Roberto Vargas. Many school districts are working towards building community handbooks or playbooks.

Brett Roer: So, right, there's policy that lives up at the board level, um, that, you know, a, your everyday student or teacher isn't ever gonna look at. And then there's the actual playbook. What does it feel like in a first grade classroom versus an eighth grade classroom versus English versus science? And so Roberto and his school have, you know, I got a chance to read it fresh off the press last week, and there was, I walked with him, read it.

Brett Roer: There's many other folks out there, but you said if you said two would be okay. I don't wanna, uh,

Aaron Cuny: oh, you could keep going. This is, I could have this conversation all day. And also , uh, Roberto is a partner of ours and so I'm, I'm excited to hear his name mentioned, but I'm happy to stay on this.

Rebecca Bultsma: He is outstanding.

Rebecca Bultsma: I had a chance to read that handbook too. And it is like Chef's kiss. It is everything that I would include that I recommend people include. Uh, so adding. My check mark as the third behind that.

Brett Roer: Rebecca, maybe rule of three. Maybe you can finish us off with a third person or a in addition district or leave it.

Rebecca Bultsma: And the every single member of their district, uh, has a dedicated AI microcredential that they now have the opportunity to work towards. And it's really sort of involving everybody in the process and giving everyone an opportunity to incorporate AI in their role. Uh, whatever it is. In the district, which I thought was great to kind of formalize it like that instead of just showing up and doing a PD and uh, then expecting people to just carry it on.

Rebecca Bultsma: I think it gives some good accountability and a little structure. So I, I was a huge fan of that.

Brett Roer: I got one more group of people that don't get shouted out enough. Is that okay? This is it, I swear.

Aaron Cuny: Yeah, no, keep going.

Brett Roer: Um, he saw like the most basic ways I was using ai, just like in co in corresponding. Like, he just watched me working one day over a cup of coffee and just was like, how are you doing that? And I shared and he's like, can you do this in my district? And he got his whole leadership team to come to a barn, uh, the day before school started and they had never.

Brett Roer: Used AI like systemically to think about, for example, the instructional cycle or other things. And so that was August 1st, right? Not even three months ago. And so we just met yesterday, we had an hour long debrief with his curriculum director, uh, for his district. So he's like, well, you know, it's really hard and we're doing this and we're doing that.

Brett Roer: And you know, as always, educators are like, they're just, they're not willing to accept that they're actually crushing it. Right? Like they don't realize, or they're not willing to say publicly, like. This is actually incredible, right? Three months ago, they had never touched ai and she's like, well, every one of those principles now goes into classrooms.

Brett Roer: I'm like, yep. And she's like, and I would love to learn about programming. 'cause they reached out to me like the night after they made their programs. And I'm like, can you up us fix programming? And I used to program and I was like, wow, AI is such a better way to program. And she's like, I'm like, yeah.

Brett Roer: She's like, can we have a meeting like now so we can get ahead of it? I'm like. I'm like, these are all like, incredible things. And then she's like, can we have, like in January we're gonna have a pd, a service day? And we have these two great teachers, like, we're like, great, do you want help? Like letting them showcase what they're doing, just showing like in Rosebud lot, this is literally how they're doing it.

Brett Roer: And she's like, yeah, they love when that happens. I'm like, right, like, you're doing all these things at the instructional level, at the leadership level, at the, at the pol uh, the operational level. I'm like. If you were doing any one of these things, I'd say That's incredible. You've implemented that in a few months of your school.

Aaron Cuny: I, I believe that there are like some, some hidden gems like that scattered all around the country. Folks that are flying below the radar, we, we can probably, the three of us can think about who some of the usual players are that deservedly, you know, get invited to the panels to talk about the work that they're leading.

Aaron Cuny: But there's a lot more folks that are doing innovative work and I will just take this opportunity to share. This is why we have launched the AI Innovation Index, which essentially is looking to scale system level data collection across the country from school districts. Looking at what are staff saying about ai, what are students saying about the development of their AI literacy and what is the leadership work that is happening?

Aaron Cuny: The, the, the, the data backs up that they're crushing it. What can we do? To learn from them, to spotlight their work to make sure that it's getting the attention that it deserves. Right now, you know, we, over the last couple of years, we've had this proliferation of surveys of, uh, educators, students, you know, ask them about their perspectives around ai, but we haven't had system level data that allows us to triangulate between.

Aaron Cuny: And then what do we know about the leadership work that's happening in that school system? That is driving those, those positive outlier outcomes. So we haven't had good systems level AI innovation data that we can compare, you know, across the country and, and internationally. And so we are hoping to do that in order to really be able to tell a lot more of the stories, um, that, you know, like the one that you just mentioned.

Brett Roer: Hey, I'm, uh, just wanna share, you know, uh, again, Aaron highlighted some of these amazing things during our prep for this, uh, today's podcast. I'm on their website. I just wanna share like one, 'cause this almost is better than wrapping up with our Oceans 11 'cause we'll make sure we add this to the show notes.

Brett Roer: These are some incredible organizations behind it. And then actually, what I'm really just wanna make sure people check out is go to the framework and look at the questions that they're asking either students or staff. Because as someone who's had to administer so many staff surveys. These are really relevant right now.

Brett Roer: Uh, like just the very first question for students. I understand how AI can be both helpful and harmful to me and others. If a student can't answer and say that they feel like a school has prepared them for that, it's gonna be very hard to say. We're equipping them for the future of. Society, workforce post-secondary readiness.

Aaron Cuny: Thanks Brett. Appreciate that.

Brett Roer: Yeah, and so. I just wanna say Aaron, we are gonna make sure you get to that, you know, to your kiddo. Um, I'm also about to head on to daddy duty.

Brett Roer: I can hear my son's piano lesson wrapping up, but I wanna say thank you for the work you're leading for bringing all of this to as many. Educators and communities as possible and for just doing this great work. So thank you once again, Aaron, for joining us. Thank you Rebecca as always for being the leader in this space.

Brett Roer: And thank you to our listeners. We look forward to, uh, welcoming you to our next episode of the AmpED to 11 podcast. Have a wonderful day everybody.