Robin Lake is Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), based at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. For more than two decades she has been one of the most respected systems thinkers in American education — researching charter schools, district–charter collaboration, portfolio strategy, and urban school reform, and testifying before the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee and state legislatures. She holds a BA in International Studies and an MPA in Education and Urban Policy from the University of Washington, and was named to the 2016 class of Pahara-Aspen Education Fellows.

Over the past three years, Robin has pivoted CRPE's work toward AI in education. She writes the newsletter Think Forward: Learning with AI, leads the inaugural Think Forward Fellowship (bringing together policymakers, system leaders, educators, researchers, funders, and technologists), and convenes the annual Think Forward: Learning with AI Forum. Her recent work includes Getting Beyond the Lightbulb Stage: Why AI Is Not Yet Transforming Education (CRPE, 2026), based on 50+ stakeholder interviews.

In this episode, Robin talks with Svenia Busson about:

  • The "lightbulb moment" vs. the transformation moment — why AI is saving teachers time but hasn't yet changed how schools actually work
  • "Precision learning" picking up where personalized learning failed — inspired by a Fred Hutch cancer-center billboard, "We treat your cancer like it's YOUR cancer"
  • Why the real prize is making schools more human — using AI to deepen relationships, not replace them
  • Fixing measurement and accountability first — why old assessment systems block the durable skills (adaptability, resilience, judgment) the future demands
  • AI governance as an R&D endeavour — balancing guardrails against innovation, and the case for state-backed "innovation districts"
  • The charter school model as a "license to dream" — what Agua Fria's AI-powered career academies and Summit Public Schools reveal
  • Why schools of education are failing to prepare new teachers for AI — and the certification signals that could change it fastest


A clear-eyed case that AI's greatest gift to education could be making school human.

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