How AI should increase instructional alignment (and decrease complexity)

Alignment in education is a simple idea to describe yet often difficult to achieve.

Alignment exists everywhere around us. Whether in nature, music, athletics, or leadership, success often depends upon multiple parts working together toward a common purpose. When the parts are aligned, remarkable things can happen. When they are not, even our best intentions can produce unintended consequences.

I learned this lesson during my first year as a middle school principal. Like many schools, ours was struggling with student attendance. Chronic absenteeism had become a significant concern, and the effects were showing up everywhere, from classroom engagement to test scores. Improving attendance became one of the primary goals.

Wanting to act quickly, I introduced a new policy. Students with three consecutive tardies would receive a one-day suspension or remain out of school until a parent or guardian could accompany them back for a conference with school administration.

At first, the idea made perfect sense. I believed the policy would create accountability, encourage family involvement, and communicate that arriving at school on time mattered.

Then something occurred to me. How was I going to improve attendance by sending students home?

The more I reflected on the policy, the more I realized that while my intentions were good, my actions were working against my objective. I had created a consequence that directly conflicted with the outcome I hoped to achieve.

In other words, my strategy was not aligned with my goal. I realized that good intentions matter, but alignment matters more.

This same lesson applies to one of education’s newest—and perhaps most polarizing—topics: Artificial intelligence.

AI in education: Essential questions for teachers and leaders

Over the past year, nearly every conversation I have participated in has eventually found its way to the topic of AI. Whether I am speaking with teachers, principals, curriculum directors, or superintendents, the questions sound remarkably similar:

1. Can AI actually help teachers?
2. Will AI eventually replace teachers?
3. Is AI simply another trend?
4. How do we know we are using AI tools responsibly?

These are fair questions—and exactly the questions educators should be asking.

Throughout my career, I have learned that educators rarely resist innovation simply because it is new. They resist innovation when it creates more work than it removes. Teachers have never asked for another dashboard, login, disconnected platform, or initiative competing for their attention.

This reality has very little to do with AI. It has everything to do with time.

The real alignment challenge: Fragmentation in schools

To be honest, I don’t believe that AI adoption is the biggest challenge facing education today. Fragmentation is.

Over the years, I have watched extraordinary educators spend countless hours navigating disconnected systems in order to do what they care about most—helping students learn. Too often,

• Assessment data lives in one platform;
• Curriculum resources in another;
• Intervention documentation somewhere else; and
• Practice opportunities somewhere else entirely.

Teachers become the people responsible for connecting information that technology should already be connecting for them.

Every transition between systems interrupts momentum. Every additional login costs time. Every disconnected workflow creates another opportunity for instructional insights to be overlooked.

Research has long demonstrated that schools experience greater success when curriculum, assessment, instructional practice, and professional learning reinforce one another rather than operate as isolated initiatives (Newmann et al., 2001). Likewise, instructional alignment research has consistently shown that student learning improves when standards, classroom instruction, and assessment are intentionally connected (Polikoff, 2012).

Students experience learning as one continuous journey. But educators are expected to manage that journey through disconnected pieces. That is not an AI problem. It is an alignment problem.

And alignment problems require coherent solutions.

Supporting teachers with greater instructional alignment

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of educators at an urban school in North Carolina. Their story was inspiring.

In 2019, the school had come close to a state takeover because of years of low academic performance. Rather than accepting that outcome, school leaders committed themselves to a focused improvement model built around consistency, collaboration, and intentional instructional practices. Their efforts paid off. The school avoided state intervention and has continued building positive momentum ever since.

Following the session, one of the lead teachers stayed behind to continue the conversation. There was something especially meaningful about that moment because she had once been one of my students.

Now, more than a decade into her own teaching career, she was not questioning the importance of differentiated instruction. She also was not questioning formative assessment or the value of using data to inform instruction. She believed in all of it.

Instead, she asked a much more practical question: How could she find the time to do all of it well?

As we talked, she described an educational landscape that has become increasingly familiar to teachers across the country:

• Student information lived in multiple systems.
• Reports had to be pulled from different platforms.
• Lesson planning often meant preparing three or four versions of the same lesson because of the wide range of academic needs represented in a single classroom.

Add pacing guides, faculty meetings, parent communication, intervention documentation, and the everyday unpredictability of teaching, and it became obvious that the challenge is not a lack of commitment. It is a lack of capacity.

That conversation has stayed with me because it reminded me that educators are not asking technology to make teaching easier. They are asking it to make great teaching more sustainable.

Every teacher understands that no two students learn in exactly the same way. Some differences are subtle. Others can feel worlds apart. Yet every student deserves instruction that meets them where they are while continuing to move them toward rigorous grade-level expectations.

That expectation has always existed. What has changed is the amount of information teachers are now expected to process in order to make instructional decisions.

Teachers routinely analyze screening results, classroom assessments, benchmark data, observational notes, intervention records, attendance patterns, behavior information, and student work—all while planning lessons, building relationships, communicating with families, collaborating with colleagues, and responding to the countless moments that define a school day.

It is an extraordinary cognitive demand.

Recent research reinforces this point. A 2025 review examining differentiated instruction concluded that while meeting the needs of diverse learners remains essential, successful implementation depends not only on classroom strategies but also on adequate professional preparation, instructional resources, and system-level support that enables teachers to respond effectively to individual learner needs (Goyibova et al., 2025).

That distinction is important.

Throughout my career, I’ve never met a teacher who questioned whether students deserve individualized support, and the challenge has rarely been understanding what students need. The challenge has been having enough time, enough clarity, and enough support to respond consistently.

The question is no longer whether teachers should differentiate instruction. They already do. The question is whether the systems surrounding teachers make differentiation more manageable—or more difficult.

Technology should think faster so teachers can think more deeply

One of the greatest misconceptions surrounding AI is that its greatest contribution will be automation. I don’t believe that is the real opportunity. The greatest gift AI can offer educators is something far more valuable:

• Time to notice the student who has quietly stopped participating.
• Time to conference with a struggling reader instead of organizing spreadsheets.
• Time to collaborate with colleagues.
• Time to provide meaningful feedback.
• Time to call a parent or guardian.
• Time to encourage a reluctant learner.
• Time to ask one more question.
• Time to build one more relationship.

Every educator I know wishes there were more hours in the school day. AI cannot create more hours, but it can eliminate many of the interruptions that consume them.

When systems work together, teachers spend less time hunting for information, reconciling disconnected reports, translating data between platforms, and determining next instructional steps.

Instead, they gain more opportunities to do the work that first called them into education. That, to me, is where AI finds its greatest purpose. Not in replacing professional judgment. Not in making instructional decisions for teachers. But in creating more opportunities for teachers to exercise the expertise, compassion, creativity, and wisdom that no technology can replicate.

Renaissance Intelligence: A different approach to educational AI

This is why Renaissance Intelligence has genuinely captured my attention. Not simply because it uses AI, given that nearly every educational company is now talking about AI.

What makes Renaissance Intelligence different is its philosophy. Rather than asking schools to abandon the curriculum, instructional resources, standards, and textbooks they have spent years implementing, Renaissance Intelligence is intentionally designed to work alongside them:

• Assessment insights remain connected to classroom instruction;
• Instruction remains connected to district curriculum;
• Practice opportunities reinforce classroom learning; and
• Student progress remains connected to meaningful instructional feedback.

Everything points in the same direction, and that alignment matters. When assessment, instruction, and practice reinforce one another instead of competing with one another, teachers spend less time translating information between disconnected systems and more time responding to student needs.

Equally important, Renaissance Intelligence maintains a commitment to grade-level learning while recognizing that students often require different pathways to reach the same destination. Rather than lowering expectations, it helps educators scaffold prerequisite skills while keeping students connected to rigorous grade-level content.

Perhaps what resonates with me most is the intentionality behind the design. Whole group instruction informs small group learning. Small group learning strengthens independent practice. Independent practice generates new instructional insights. Those insights strengthen tomorrow’s instruction.

Every component reinforces the next. That is instructional coherence.

AI tools in Renaissance Intelligence

AI operates within that same philosophy. Rather than positioning AI as the centerpiece, Renaissance Intelligence places it quietly behind the scenes through three complementary layers:

• The Learning Engine continuously analyzes student learning to surface meaningful next steps that help teachers provide timely, targeted support without requiring hours of additional analysis.
• The Alignment Engine helps ensure instructional resources remain connected to district curriculum, standards, pacing, and classroom goals.
• The Teacher AI Tools help reduce preparation time by assisting educators in planning meaningful instruction.

Each layer serves a different purpose. Together, however, they support one goal: Helping teachers know what needs to happen next. Not because AI knows students better than teachers, but because AI can organize information faster, allowing teachers to make better-informed professional decisions.

That is AI serving education, not education serving AI.

Looking ahead: AI in the service of learning

During my first year as a principal, I believed I had developed an innovative solution to improve student attendance. Instead, I had unintentionally created a system that worked against the very outcome I hoped to achieve.

The problem was not my commitment, my vision, or my effort. It was my alignment.

That lesson has remained with me because it reminds me that even our best intentions require systems capable of supporting them. And I believe the same lesson applies to AI.

The future of education will not be determined by how sophisticated AI becomes. It will be determined by whether we use it to strengthen the relationships, instructional decisions, and learning experiences that matter most.

For me, the conversation has never really been about artificial intelligence. It has always been about helping teachers do what they have always done best. See students. Understand their needs. Build meaningful relationships. Create learning experiences that inspire growth.

AI should never compete with those priorities. It should quietly support them.

Because the conversation should never begin with what AI can do. It should begin with what students need and what teachers do best. Everything else should serve these two priorities.

References

Goyibova, N., Muslimov, N., Sabirova, G., Kadirova, N., & Samatova, B. (2025). Differentiation approach in education: Tailoring instruction for diverse learner needs. MethodsX, 14, 103163.

Newmann, F. M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E., & Bryk, A. S. (2001). Instructional program coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), 297–321.

Polikoff, M. S. (2012). Instructional alignment under No Child Left Behind. American Journal of Education, 118(3), 341–368.