Smarter Balanced, in Collaboration with IBM Consulting, Unveils Student-Centric Design Principles for Responsible Use of AI
Santa Clara, CA, August 12, 2025 – Today, Smarter Balanced, in collaboration with IBM Consulting, unveiled its Student-Centric Design Principles for Responsible Use of AI, that provides guidance regarding designing and integrating AI in large-scale educational assessments. Serving as a resource to the educational measurement community and state, district, and school leaders, these principles offer a foundation for ongoing conversations and decisions related to how AI is best leveraged in assessment system designs. An executive summary of the document is also available.
“We are excited to release these principles and look forward to using them as we consider how AI can better support fair and accurate assessments that improve teaching and learning. We appreciate our collaboration with IBM consulting and the multi-disciplinary group of experts that helped build these principles,” said Smarter Balanced Executive Director Tony Alpert.
Grounded in IBM’s Artificial Intelligence Pillars (2023), the eight principles — fair, secure and robust, helpful, explainable, transparent, agency, growth mindset, and kind — were developed in partnership with multidisciplinary groups including educational assessment and measurement experts; those serving in state, district, and local educational contexts; higher education experts; and policymakers. Interest holders at conferences and invited sessions, including the Council of Chief State School Officers National Conference on Student Assessment, the National Assessment Governing Board, and IBM Think 2024 also provided feedback.
The principles can be used to help incorporate AI in assessments in a manner consistent with best
practices in universal design, evaluate whether AI-based solutions are appropriate for teachers and students, and serve as a best-practices guide for assessment design even when AI isn’t involved.
“To build trustworthy AI, organizations need a clear understanding of their core principles plus a socio-technical approach to putting those principles to work,” said IBM Consulting Global Leader for Trustworthy AI Phaedra Boinodiris. “Smarter Balanced’s Student-Centric Design Principles for Responsible Use of AI offer a thoughtful starting point for identifying the unique risks in educational measurement and imagining what responsible AI should require in this context.”
About IBM Consulting
IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for its clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging its open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, IBM Consulting has become the trusted partner to many of the world’s most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and protect their most complex systems. Its 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply its proven, collaborative engagement model, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.
About Smarter Balanced
Smarter Balanced is a member-led consortium providing the most comprehensive and innovative standards-aligned system that supports teaching and learning and improves local and statewide systems. Our dynamic system of educational tools — developed in collaboration with our members and educators — gives teachers integrated lessons, activities, and methods of gauging progress, along with interim and summative assessments that provide actionable data as students progress toward college- and career-readiness. www.smarterbalanced.org
Media Contact: Kimberly Blanchard, Director of External Affairs Programs | kimberly.blanchard@smarterbalanced.org | (831) 316-2549
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