Teachers are becoming integral co-designers of edtech solutions. Stanford’s EduNLP Lab recently gathered more than 60 K–12 math educators to examine how AI tools could better serve classrooms. The educators established rubrics emphasising accuracy, inclusiveness, and utility as top priorities, while candidly exploring tensions between accuracy and creativity or efficiency and context.

This move toward co-design marks a philosophical pivot. For years, AI in education was developed top-down by technologists, often detached from the realities of the classroom. Stanford’s initiative recognises that the success of educational AI depends on educators’ trust, input, and lived experience.

Co-creating with teachers not only increases product relevance but also accelerates adoption. Educators hold the credibility and insight to translate AI tools into meaningful classroom practices. For startups, building structured feedback loops with teachers could become as vital as product development itself.

As schools integrate AI for assessment, adaptive learning, and engagement, the most successful solutions will be those that recognise teachers as collaborators, not customers. The EdTech companies that embed educator voices into their innovation processes are positioning themselves to lead the next decade of sustainable, trusted digital learning.