Partnership for Educators Advancing AI Knowledge

The Partnership for Educators Advancing AI Knowledge (PEA²K) is a cohort program from MassCUE, Throughline Learning, and UMass Lowell’s AI Teach Co-Design Lab. It brings together district leadership teams from across Massachusetts to think carefully about the role AI should play in their schools and to build a plan that fits their own goals, students, and communities.

Each district team includes classroom teachers and district leaders working side by side. In their first year, teams meet virtually each month and work one-on-one with a coach on the questions that matter most in their district. Along the way, they explore DESE’s AI guidance, hear from colleagues in other districts, and draft a shared vision and roadmap for AI in teaching and learning. In the second year, teams continue the work, putting their plans into practice and building on what they’ve learned. Each year wraps up with an in-person Sharefest, where teams celebrate and share their progress.

PEA²K is designed to move districts beyond theory and into action, with each year building on the last.

Year 1: Building the Foundation

In the first year, teams develop a shared vision and a clear roadmap for AI in their district.

Readiness Framework: Teams evaluate their district’s current AI integration to identify strengths, gaps, and goals.
Strategic Roadmap: Teams build a concrete, actionable plan tailored to their district’s needs.
Expert Coaching: Dedicated one-on-one sessions help teams work through their district’s specific challenges.
Toolkits: Teams have access to vetted templates and resources aligned with DESE’s AI guidance.
Peer Network: Teams connect with district leaders across Massachusetts who are working through the same questions.

Year 2: Putting Plans into Practice

In the second year, the focus shifts to implementation, with an approach designed to take the pressure off districts while keeping responsible guidance at the center. Rather than pushing for uniform adoption, teams move through three stages:

Readiness and Pre-Conditions: Making sure governance, policy, data privacy guardrails, and professional learning are in place before any tool or pilot reaches a classroom.
Community Co-Design and Co-Build: Identifying a specific problem of practice, selecting or co-designing the right AI tool, and structuring a targeted pilot.
Evaluation for Impact: Setting clear metrics and gathering evidence to decide whether a pilot is worth scaling, with defined on-ramps and off-ramps.

Districts organize their pilots around three entry points: district leadership and operations (such as streamlining administrative workflows and shared workspaces), instructional use cases (working with early-adopter teachers on specific classroom challenges), and student-facing work (including age-appropriate guidelines and digital literacy frameworks).

Throughout the year, teams continue to receive one-on-one coaching from Throughline Learning and use tools like the DESE Readiness Tool and the AI Innovation Index to measure progress based on real evidence. Virtual sessions also feature short Spotlight Sessions, where leaders from inside and outside the cohort share a problem of practice, the tool they built or bought, how they tested it, and what they learned. These stories feed into a shared statewide Use-Case Library that all participating teams can draw from.