Introducing the AI Readiness Index: The Question Nobody Else Is Asking

By: Richard Awni, Founder & Chairman, Family First Foundation

Every tracker out there will tell you whether your state has an AI policy. None of them will tell you the thing that actually matters whether anyone in that state is preparing a single student to use it well.

That’s the gap we built the AI Readiness Index to close.

We didn’t set out to build another policy tracker, there are already several, and they don’t even agree with each other. One count says 33 states have guidance. Another says 35, plus Puerto Rico. A third lists several of those same states as having no policy at all. We’re not interested in adding a fourth number to that argument. We’re interested in a different question entirely: policy aside, is a state actually building the thing a student needs, structured, executable readiness training, not just a document sitting in a folder somewhere?

What We Scored, and Why

We built the Index around six questions, each worth up to four points: Does a policy exist, and is it a mandate or just guidance? Is it structured, with real governance and defined roles, or just principles on paper? Are there funded, implemented programs, or only plans to have some someday? What grade levels does it actually reach? Does access guidance differentiate by grade, or is it one blanket rule for everyone? And — the one nobody else asks, is readiness instruction actually required, or is “access” the whole policy?

That last question is the heart of it. A state can restrict access heavily and still score zero on readiness if restriction is the entire strategy. Kids don’t wait for a policy to tell them they can use AI. They already are. Restricting access without teaching anyone how to use it well isn’t readiness. It’s just delay.

What We Found, in Our First Six States

We scored six states as a starting proof of concept, using their own published policy documents and legislative trackers: Maryland and Connecticut came out on top, both paired real mandates with actual funded implementation, not just guidance. Utah scored solidly in the middle, with a real framework but room to grow. Ohio and New York, despite real legislative activity, scored surprisingly low, because a mandate that hasn’t been implemented yet, or a restriction with no instruction behind it, doesn’t move the needle on readiness, no matter how much news coverage the bill gets.

That’s the finding worth sitting with legislative activity and student readiness are not the same thing, and right now, most of the country has plenty of the first and very little of the second.

This Is Just the Beginning

Six states is a start, not the finish line. We’re building out the full fifty-state Index for our next release, and every quarter after that we’ll publish the update, who moved, who didn’t, and what it actually took to move.

We’re not chasing this story. We’re the ones telling it.

This article may be shared or republished in full, with attribution to The Artificial Intelligence Institute and a link back to the original.