Overworked and Understaffed: Special Ed Teachers Turn to AI for Help
Should Schools Get Rid of Homework? The Answer is Complex and AI Contributes
Feedback Bias? How AI Adjusts Replies Based on Race and Gender, Research Finds
Do You Like AI Because AI Likes You? How AI Flattery Crosses Signals
The Quest to Build a Better AI Tutor
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College Students, Professors are Making Their Own AI Rules. They Don't Always Agree
‘It Was Terrible’: AI Failures Make Writing by Hand Better for Thinking Skills in One Classroom
The Risks of AI in Schools Outweigh the Benefits, Report Says
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: NPR uses only the first names of minors in this story because it discusses their learning disabilities and placement in special education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BAY POINT, Calif. — The sun would just be rising when teacher Mary Acebu began her days. She’d blast music on the way to work to get energized and get to her classroom by 6:30 to prepare for her students’ arrival at 8. Often, it’d be dark by the time she headed home, sometimes with paperwork in tow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like so many special education teachers around the country, this was Acebu’s life for much of the 10 years she’s been teaching at Riverview Middle School, in this small, unincorporated northern California town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t do that anymore,” she says with a laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Acebu has been experimenting with artificial intelligence for the last two years to get through paperwork more quickly and says it’s helped her instead use precious time for student interaction. “I have time to talk to the kiddos and really build those relationships,” she says, “instead of sitting here in front of my computer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, schools nationwide have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1247795768/children-disabilities-special-education-teacher-shortage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">struggled with hiring and retaining\u003c/a> special educators. In the 2024-25 school year, \u003ca href=\"https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-shortages-subjects-across-states-factsheet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">45 states reported\u003c/a> special education teacher shortages, and staff turnover is worse in schools that largely serve low-income students, like Riverview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is legally required paperwork layered on top of regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of those teachers around the nation using AI to help speed up that paperwork — including for writing individualized education programs (IEPs). Educators and families maintain these detailed documents that outline goals and services students need to meet those goals at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-10-28-CDT-AI-IEP-Brief-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a recent survey\u003c/a> by the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57% of special education teachers polled nationwide said they used AI to help develop individualized plans for their students in the 2024-25 school year. That’s up from 39% the previous school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with the survey results, the CDT warned of privacy, legal and ethical risks around using AI. Other research, however, including from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), has shown that when used appropriately, AI can help special education teachers craft IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers produce them alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the time saved can benefit students, too. “The more face time a student with a disability has with a teacher, that often yields better outcomes for them, both educationally, functionally — just across the board,” says Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who has been studying the role of AI in special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that rings true in her classroom. She points out King, one of her eighth graders, as an example. “He was a non-reader, beginning of seventh grade. He’s reading now.” That, for Acebu, is the \u003cem>point\u003c/em> of IEPs — to put what’s on paper into practice for her students. She says that is only possible with intentional, hands-on work in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>What IEPs are and why they matter\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Every seventh and eighth grader in Mary Acebu’s class learns differently — some work independently, some in pairs, others with headphones on and yet others with speech-to-text technology. Those differences are captured in each child’s IEP, a document required by federal law for each of the over 8 million students with disabilities in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8d%2F57%2F8601fa57482dbd294f690c16221d%2F36a0496-tif.jpg\" alt=\"Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\">\u003cfigcaption>Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Every IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s present needs, but importantly, “also where you want them to go within the next year,” says Danielle Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Coleman and Waterfield say while many teachers report feeling bogged down by the work that goes into developing IEPs, teachers also recognize they are a necessary tool for students with disabilities to get a quality education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that to develop those goals, teachers must know each student’s learning style intimately. “The key term is ‘individualized.’ No two kids are the same,” she says. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and a deep knowledge of complex education law and policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It used to take Acebu around 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals per student. She points to a big, blue binder at least 5 inches thick on her bookshelf that contains California’s education standards. “It used to be flipping through all those pages,” to find the right standard to match unique student goals, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI — with a ‘human touch’ \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A couple of years ago, Acebu began taking courses on how to safely and effectively use AI. Around the same time, her district, Mt. Diablo Unified, entered agreements with companies that offer education-focused AI tools including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a primary concern for those who warn against the risks of using AI in schools. A growing number of districts are adopting such products, though \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/technology/which-states-require-schools-to-have-ai-policies/2025/09\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">only a few states\u003c/a> have official AI education policies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, using a district-vetted tool, Acebu customized chatbots for her school and trained them on state standards, assessments and other special education data. She now uses her “little assistants” for a wide range of tasks, from creating personalized worksheets to developing IEP goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, she says, “you’re double-checking everything. Like you have to put that human touch, that’s the final step.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5c%2F9b%2F7917c6324542801ed762bdb30d77%2F36a9904-tif.jpg\" alt=\"King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu's class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\">\u003cfigcaption>King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu’s class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F46%2F00%2F54e6a456459fa6fb438ca613f8a0%2F36a9793-tif.jpg\" alt=\"For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu's help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\">\u003cfigcaption>For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu’s help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01626434261419099\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In their research,\u003c/a> Coleman and Waterfield found special education teachers nationwide are using AI to help write IEP goals, track student progress, synthesize data and create differentiated learning materials, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu is uniquely equipped to use tech-tools: She just earned her doctorate in instructional technology and is on her district’s AI task force, which is developing an official AI policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of Acebu’s less tech-savvy colleagues, however, were skeptical, including Paul Stone, who has been a special educator at Riverview for 22 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the number of students he serves shot up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it has put a huge stressor on my mental health and my life,” Stone says of his work this year. “It would be kind of nice if there were two jobs, like one paperwork job and one working with the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, a few weeks ago, after a tutorial from Acebu, he gave her chatbot a shot. He was surprised by the results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an amazing time-saver so far,” he says. Stone has used AI for a number of things including producing simple summaries of complicated data to present to parents at IEP meetings. “I mean, it’s not like ‘that’s it, I’m done.’ I still have to go through and check it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and Acebu both say it could help them, and other educators, avoid burnout. Yet, Ariana Aboulafia, who was the lead author of CDT’s report, calls AI tools “a Band-Aid” for special education teachers who feel overworked.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI in special education — with guardrails\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Band-Aid or not, more teachers \u003cem>are \u003c/em>using AI around the country. There are a litany of concerns about its use, especially in special education, which is highly regulated. “Student privacy is number one,” says Acebu. “Don’t put information there that’s gonna identify your students.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while the risks around privacy may be reduced if a school is using a vetted vendor, data breaches could still make that information vulnerable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all teachers are using district-approved tools. Coleman, Waterfield and CDT’s research all found that educators around the country are using AI both formally and informally — from free consumer platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to district-approved tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini and Playground IEP, among others. To help teachers navigate this complicated landscape, Waterfield and Coleman \u003ca href=\"https://ciddl.org/navigating-ai-in-iep-development-a-framework-for-ethical-practice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">developed a “decision tree”\u003c/a> for ethical AI use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another consideration is the fact that AI models can be biased, including against people with disabilities, says Aboulafia, who leads the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Project at CDT. In addition, she worries AI models built on pattern recognition are, “to a certain extent, inherently incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aboulafia is most concerned about the 15% of teachers CDT’s survey found have been relying entirely on AI to develop IEPs. There must always be a “human in the loop,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu, who happens to be her district’s teacher of the year, says these days, she comes to class just 30 minutes before her students, and leaves just after the last bell. This has improved her work-life balance and the quality of her teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King, the eighth grader in her class who has evolved into a confident reader, also goes to math class now without any additional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the dream of every special educator,” she says, beaming. “But guess what? That takes a lot of hard work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI tools, Acebu says, have given her more time for that kind of hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Edited by: Nirvi Shah\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Visual design and development by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348775569/la-johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>LA Johnson\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: NPR uses only the first names of minors in this story because it discusses their learning disabilities and placement in special education.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BAY POINT, Calif. — The sun would just be rising when teacher Mary Acebu began her days. She’d blast music on the way to work to get energized and get to her classroom by 6:30 to prepare for her students’ arrival at 8. Often, it’d be dark by the time she headed home, sometimes with paperwork in tow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like so many special education teachers around the country, this was Acebu’s life for much of the 10 years she’s been teaching at Riverview Middle School, in this small, unincorporated northern California town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t do that anymore,” she says with a laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s because Acebu has been experimenting with artificial intelligence for the last two years to get through paperwork more quickly and says it’s helped her instead use precious time for student interaction. “I have time to talk to the kiddos and really build those relationships,” she says, “instead of sitting here in front of my computer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For years, schools nationwide have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1247795768/children-disabilities-special-education-teacher-shortage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">struggled with hiring and retaining\u003c/a> special educators. In the 2024-25 school year, \u003ca href=\"https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-shortages-subjects-across-states-factsheet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">45 states reported\u003c/a> special education teacher shortages, and staff turnover is worse in schools that largely serve low-income students, like Riverview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some special educators say part of what makes them feel overworked is legally required paperwork layered on top of regular teaching duties. Acebu is one of a growing number of those teachers around the nation using AI to help speed up that paperwork — including for writing individualized education programs (IEPs). Educators and families maintain these detailed documents that outline goals and services students need to meet those goals at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025-10-28-CDT-AI-IEP-Brief-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a recent survey\u003c/a> by the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), 57% of special education teachers polled nationwide said they used AI to help develop individualized plans for their students in the 2024-25 school year. That’s up from 39% the previous school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with the survey results, the CDT warned of privacy, legal and ethical risks around using AI. Other research, however, including from the University of Virginia (UVA) and the University of Central Florida (UCF), has shown that when used appropriately, AI can help special education teachers craft IEPs of equal or higher quality than when teachers produce them alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the time saved can benefit students, too. “The more face time a student with a disability has with a teacher, that often yields better outcomes for them, both educationally, functionally — just across the board,” says Olivia Coleman, a researcher and professor at UCF who has been studying the role of AI in special education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that rings true in her classroom. She points out King, one of her eighth graders, as an example. “He was a non-reader, beginning of seventh grade. He’s reading now.” That, for Acebu, is the \u003cem>point\u003c/em> of IEPs — to put what’s on paper into practice for her students. She says that is only possible with intentional, hands-on work in the classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>What IEPs are and why they matter\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Every seventh and eighth grader in Mary Acebu’s class learns differently — some work independently, some in pairs, others with headphones on and yet others with speech-to-text technology. Those differences are captured in each child’s IEP, a document required by federal law for each of the over 8 million students with disabilities in this country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8d%2F57%2F8601fa57482dbd294f690c16221d%2F36a0496-tif.jpg\" alt=\"Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\">\u003cfigcaption>Mary Acebu has been a special education teacher for a decade at Riverview Middle School. She is part of a task force that is working on an AI policy for her school district.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Every IEP includes annual goals tailored to each student’s present needs, but importantly, “also where you want them to go within the next year,” says Danielle Waterfield, Coleman’s research partner at UVA.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both Coleman and Waterfield say while many teachers report feeling bogged down by the work that goes into developing IEPs, teachers also recognize they are a necessary tool for students with disabilities to get a quality education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu says that to develop those goals, teachers must know each student’s learning style intimately. “The key term is ‘individualized.’ No two kids are the same,” she says. For special educators, the process involves hours of meetings and a deep knowledge of complex education law and policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It used to take Acebu around 45 minutes to develop three or four IEP goals per student. She points to a big, blue binder at least 5 inches thick on her bookshelf that contains California’s education standards. “It used to be flipping through all those pages,” to find the right standard to match unique student goals, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI — with a ‘human touch’ \u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A couple of years ago, Acebu began taking courses on how to safely and effectively use AI. Around the same time, her district, Mt. Diablo Unified, entered agreements with companies that offer education-focused AI tools including MagicSchool AI and Google. They promise to protect sensitive student data, a primary concern for those who warn against the risks of using AI in schools. A growing number of districts are adopting such products, though \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/technology/which-states-require-schools-to-have-ai-policies/2025/09\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">only a few states\u003c/a> have official AI education policies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, using a district-vetted tool, Acebu customized chatbots for her school and trained them on state standards, assessments and other special education data. She now uses her “little assistants” for a wide range of tasks, from creating personalized worksheets to developing IEP goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, she says, “you’re double-checking everything. Like you have to put that human touch, that’s the final step.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4000x2668+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5c%2F9b%2F7917c6324542801ed762bdb30d77%2F36a9904-tif.jpg\" alt=\"King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu's class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\">\u003cfigcaption>King, an eighth grader, went from not being able to read to reading confidently since he joined Acebu’s class last year. She says that has been possible, in part, because AI has given her more time to work directly with students in the classroom and less on paperwork.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F46%2F00%2F54e6a456459fa6fb438ca613f8a0%2F36a9793-tif.jpg\" alt=\"For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu's help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\">\u003cfigcaption>For a science project, King made turtle pieces from clay. They are part of a board game he created with Acebu’s help called Turtle Catastrophe. It was one of two projects from his school that was accepted at a local science fair.\u003cbr>\n\u003ccite> (Talia Herman for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01626434261419099\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">In their research,\u003c/a> Coleman and Waterfield found special education teachers nationwide are using AI to help write IEP goals, track student progress, synthesize data and create differentiated learning materials, among other things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu is uniquely equipped to use tech-tools: She just earned her doctorate in instructional technology and is on her district’s AI task force, which is developing an official AI policy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of Acebu’s less tech-savvy colleagues, however, were skeptical, including Paul Stone, who has been a special educator at Riverview for 22 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the number of students he serves shot up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to say it’s killing me, but it has put a huge stressor on my mental health and my life,” Stone says of his work this year. “It would be kind of nice if there were two jobs, like one paperwork job and one working with the kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, a few weeks ago, after a tutorial from Acebu, he gave her chatbot a shot. He was surprised by the results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s an amazing time-saver so far,” he says. Stone has used AI for a number of things including producing simple summaries of complicated data to present to parents at IEP meetings. “I mean, it’s not like ‘that’s it, I’m done.’ I still have to go through and check it all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He and Acebu both say it could help them, and other educators, avoid burnout. Yet, Ariana Aboulafia, who was the lead author of CDT’s report, calls AI tools “a Band-Aid” for special education teachers who feel overworked.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Using AI in special education — with guardrails\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Band-Aid or not, more teachers \u003cem>are \u003c/em>using AI around the country. There are a litany of concerns about its use, especially in special education, which is highly regulated. “Student privacy is number one,” says Acebu. “Don’t put information there that’s gonna identify your students.” CDT’s Aboulafia adds that while the risks around privacy may be reduced if a school is using a vetted vendor, data breaches could still make that information vulnerable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not all teachers are using district-approved tools. Coleman, Waterfield and CDT’s research all found that educators around the country are using AI both formally and informally — from free consumer platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to district-approved tools like MagicSchool AI, Google Gemini and Playground IEP, among others. To help teachers navigate this complicated landscape, Waterfield and Coleman \u003ca href=\"https://ciddl.org/navigating-ai-in-iep-development-a-framework-for-ethical-practice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">developed a “decision tree”\u003c/a> for ethical AI use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another consideration is the fact that AI models can be biased, including against people with disabilities, says Aboulafia, who leads the Disability Rights in Technology Policy Project at CDT. In addition, she worries AI models built on pattern recognition are, “to a certain extent, inherently incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aboulafia is most concerned about the 15% of teachers CDT’s survey found have been relying entirely on AI to develop IEPs. There must always be a “human in the loop,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acebu, who happens to be her district’s teacher of the year, says these days, she comes to class just 30 minutes before her students, and leaves just after the last bell. This has improved her work-life balance and the quality of her teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>King, the eighth grader in her class who has evolved into a confident reader, also goes to math class now without any additional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the dream of every special educator,” she says, beaming. “But guess what? That takes a lot of hard work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI tools, Acebu says, have given her more time for that kind of hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Edited by: Nirvi Shah\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>Visual design and development by: \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/348775569/la-johnson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>LA Johnson\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A few days into the new semester this January, the LaSalle Parish school district in rural Louisiana made a pronouncement: No more homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, none of the 2,500 students in this district — from the youngest learners up through high school seniors — have been required to do schoolwork at home. Parents can request practice problems if they’d like, Superintendent Jonathan Garrett said, but that work won’t be mandatory or graded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Homework assignments, it turned out, were among the biggest sources of complaints Garrett had heard from parents and students over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When there was a negative feeling about school, it usually stemmed from what kids are bringing home, the frustrations they feel completing that, and that parents and guardians feel trying to help them complete it,” he said in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond that, Garrett said the move was driven by concerns – shared by many educators – that much of the homework students are assigned – especially in math – is needlessly repetitive, takes too long to complete and hasn’t adapted to the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The response to Garrett’s announcement was swift — and overwhelmingly positive. The message is the district’s most “liked”\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1444965060964889&set=a.499624705498934\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> post on Facebook\u003c/a> by far this year, with hundreds of shares — many of them by parents from neighboring parishes asking how they could get their own schools on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scope of the district’s no-homework guidance is new, but it follows a trend that educators and researchers have been noticing for years: More teachers are moving away from homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn’t spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8025066/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> perform better than their peers\u003c/a>. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control,” and that’s what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. “There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In math especially, students need practice\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The debate over homework has swung back and forth for more than a century, and the tide of public opinion has shifted every few years. It’s likely to continue changing for a simple reason: Researching homework is a challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no good way to isolate the amount of time spent on homework and its effects on students, because it may take one student five minutes to complete the same math problem that another student spent 45 minutes on. That extra time doesn’t necessarily result in the struggling student performing better than the student who grasped the assignment more quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, just like playing the violin or hitting a baseball, or any other skill that requires training, there is evidence that students need practice to master academic subjects, particularly in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some experts worry the overall decrease in homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/naep-test-2024-dismal-report/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> math scores across the country are already at a dismal low\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don’t want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home,” said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The effects of AI on homework\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Generative artificial intelligence has added a new wrinkle to the homework debate, too. More than half of teens said they used chatbots to help with schoolwork, and\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 1 in 10 said they used virtual assistants\u003c/a> to do all or most of their schoolwork, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A different survey of teachers by the EdWeek Research Center found that 40 percent said homework assignments had decreased over the past two years, and of those, 29 percent said it was\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/are-schools-assigning-less-homework-a-new-survey-offers-answers/2026/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> because students’ use of AI had lessened the value of homework\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1996 and 2015, very few fourth graders — between 4 and 6 percent — reported being given no math homework the previous night, according to surveys from the Nation’s Report Card. By 2024, that percentage was up to more than a quarter. There was a similar trend for eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, a nonprofit that advocates for parents, has seen this trend in her own fourth grader’s public elementary school class in Vermont, whose teacher doesn’t assign homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thing they point to is that it’s an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She believes, however, that students should do some homework without the help of their parents. “I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that’s an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said she and her mother create their own homework now for her son: reading exercises and flash cards in math. Kids, she said, “need more practice. … Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone feels this way about homework. For Jim Malliard’s two children in Franklin, Pa., adverse experiences at school became a barrier to completing homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became a fight because the kids had so much school-based anxiety from trauma and bullying at school that they didn’t want to deal with school when they got home,” said Malliard, whose kids attended a public high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malliard, who\u003ca href=\"https://candyappleadvocacy.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> writes\u003c/a> about education issues and is a full-time caregiver to his wife, doesn’t think his children were overburdened with homework at their school, but he also doesn’t believe they were benefiting from it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The teachers would tell us homework only takes 15 minutes a night — sure, if a kid sits there and does it right away and is attentive and wants to do it,” Malliard said. “It was getting to be an hour for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually enrolled his children in a virtual charter school, which they attended for the rest of their K-12 schooling.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How much is enough?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Over the years, research has attempted to answer the thorny question of how much homework is appropriate, with varying degrees of success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Education groups and researchers generally recommend 10 minutes of homework each night per grade level. But it’s almost impossible to assign work that will take every student the same amount of time to complete, and research has shown there are harmful effects from too much time spent on homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A survey published in 2014 out of Stanford University that looked at more than 4,300 students in high-performing California high school schools found that the benefit of homework for high school students\u003ca href=\"https://ed.stanford.edu/news/more-two-hours-homework-may-be-counterproductive-research-suggests\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> plateaus after two hours a night\u003c/a>. Beyond that, the researchers found, it can lead to more stress and poor sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research on homework tends to focus on the amount of time students spend on it rather than the quality or purpose of the assignments, said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One option worth considering, Epstein said, is to design homework that has a specific purpose but is perhaps shorter than traditional homework assignments. Giving students the opportunity to practice is important, she said, particularly in math, where concepts build on each other and move relentlessly forward throughout the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework,” Epstein said. “Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don’t have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples,” when they could establish mastery in less time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students are completing math homework on their own but doing the problems incorrectly, some educators say it takes longer to reteach them the right way in class the next day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado, said her district has taken the approach recommended by Epstein, of focusing on the quality of homework while assigning less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than long “drill and kill” worksheets she remembers from her time as a student, Birhanzel said elementary students in the district might have a reading assignment, a few math problems and a small writing sample. “It’s more purposeful and less intensive,” Birhanzel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Louisiana’s LaSalle Parish, Superintendent Garrett said that to account for the lost practice time, he has given math teachers permission to slow down their instruction and give students time in class to practice concepts, even if that means they don’t cover as much content during the school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We felt like doing that would actually be more beneficial than racing through and covering every single thing that was listed. We’ll see,” he said. “This might be something that helps us in the long run.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced by\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Contact writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at gilreath@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A few days into the new semester this January, the LaSalle Parish school district in rural Louisiana made a pronouncement: No more homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since then, none of the 2,500 students in this district — from the youngest learners up through high school seniors — have been required to do schoolwork at home. Parents can request practice problems if they’d like, Superintendent Jonathan Garrett said, but that work won’t be mandatory or graded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Homework assignments, it turned out, were among the biggest sources of complaints Garrett had heard from parents and students over the years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When there was a negative feeling about school, it usually stemmed from what kids are bringing home, the frustrations they feel completing that, and that parents and guardians feel trying to help them complete it,” he said in an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond that, Garrett said the move was driven by concerns – shared by many educators – that much of the homework students are assigned – especially in math – is needlessly repetitive, takes too long to complete and hasn’t adapted to the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The response to Garrett’s announcement was swift — and overwhelmingly positive. The message is the district’s most “liked”\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1444965060964889&set=a.499624705498934\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> post on Facebook\u003c/a> by far this year, with hundreds of shares — many of them by parents from neighboring parishes asking how they could get their own schools on board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scope of the district’s no-homework guidance is new, but it follows a trend that educators and researchers have been noticing for years: More teachers are moving away from homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Federal survey data shows that the amount of math homework assigned to fourth and eighth grade students, in particular, has been steadily declining for the past decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some educators and parents say this is a good thing — students shouldn’t spend six or more hours a day at school and still have additional schoolwork to complete at home. But the research on homework is complicated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some studies show that students who spend more time on homework\u003ca href=\"https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8025066/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> perform better than their peers\u003c/a>. For example, a longitudinal study released in 2021 of more than 6,000 students in Germany, Uruguay and the Netherlands found that lower-performing students who increased the amount of time they spent on math homework performed better in math, even one year later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other studies, however, suggest homework has minimal outcomes on academic performance: A 1998 study of more than 700 U.S. students led by a researcher at Duke University found that more homework assigned in elementary grades had no significant effect on standardized test scores. The researchers did find small positive gains on class grades when they looked at both test scores and the proportion of homework students completed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More homework was also associated with negative attitudes about school for younger children in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best educators figured out a long time ago that we can control what we can control,” and that’s what happens during the school day, Superintendent Garrett said, not homework. “There has been a shift away from it naturally anyway, and I felt like this made it equitable across our entire school system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>In math especially, students need practice\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The debate over homework has swung back and forth for more than a century, and the tide of public opinion has shifted every few years. It’s likely to continue changing for a simple reason: Researching homework is a challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no good way to isolate the amount of time spent on homework and its effects on students, because it may take one student five minutes to complete the same math problem that another student spent 45 minutes on. That extra time doesn’t necessarily result in the struggling student performing better than the student who grasped the assignment more quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, just like playing the violin or hitting a baseball, or any other skill that requires training, there is evidence that students need practice to master academic subjects, particularly in math.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some experts worry the overall decrease in homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/naep-test-2024-dismal-report/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> math scores across the country are already at a dismal low\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The best argument for homework is that mathematical procedures require practice, and you don’t want to waste classroom time on practice, so you send that home,” said Tom Loveless, a researcher and former teacher who has studied homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The effects of AI on homework\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Generative artificial intelligence has added a new wrinkle to the homework debate, too. More than half of teens said they used chatbots to help with schoolwork, and\u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> 1 in 10 said they used virtual assistants\u003c/a> to do all or most of their schoolwork, according to a recent survey by Pew Research Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A different survey of teachers by the EdWeek Research Center found that 40 percent said homework assignments had decreased over the past two years, and of those, 29 percent said it was\u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/leadership/are-schools-assigning-less-homework-a-new-survey-offers-answers/2026/02\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> because students’ use of AI had lessened the value of homework\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 1996 and 2015, very few fourth graders — between 4 and 6 percent — reported being given no math homework the previous night, according to surveys from the Nation’s Report Card. By 2024, that percentage was up to more than a quarter. There was a similar trend for eighth graders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of the Center for Policy and Action at the National Parents Union, a nonprofit that advocates for parents, has seen this trend in her own fourth grader’s public elementary school class in Vermont, whose teacher doesn’t assign homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thing they point to is that it’s an equity issue, and not all parents have the same availability and ability to support their students,” said Smith.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She believes, however, that students should do some homework without the help of their parents. “I would make the argument that if a kid is really far behind in school, that’s an equity issue. They need the additional time to practice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Smith said she and her mother create their own homework now for her son: reading exercises and flash cards in math. Kids, she said, “need more practice. … Sometimes, you do have to practice the boring stuff, like math.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone feels this way about homework. For Jim Malliard’s two children in Franklin, Pa., adverse experiences at school became a barrier to completing homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It became a fight because the kids had so much school-based anxiety from trauma and bullying at school that they didn’t want to deal with school when they got home,” said Malliard, whose kids attended a public high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malliard, who\u003ca href=\"https://candyappleadvocacy.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> writes\u003c/a> about education issues and is a full-time caregiver to his wife, doesn’t think his children were overburdened with homework at their school, but he also doesn’t believe they were benefiting from it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The teachers would tell us homework only takes 15 minutes a night — sure, if a kid sits there and does it right away and is attentive and wants to do it,” Malliard said. “It was getting to be an hour for us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually enrolled his children in a virtual charter school, which they attended for the rest of their K-12 schooling.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How much is enough?\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Over the years, research has attempted to answer the thorny question of how much homework is appropriate, with varying degrees of success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Education groups and researchers generally recommend 10 minutes of homework each night per grade level. But it’s almost impossible to assign work that will take every student the same amount of time to complete, and research has shown there are harmful effects from too much time spent on homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A survey published in 2014 out of Stanford University that looked at more than 4,300 students in high-performing California high school schools found that the benefit of homework for high school students\u003ca href=\"https://ed.stanford.edu/news/more-two-hours-homework-may-be-counterproductive-research-suggests\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> plateaus after two hours a night\u003c/a>. Beyond that, the researchers found, it can lead to more stress and poor sleep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research on homework tends to focus on the amount of time students spend on it rather than the quality or purpose of the assignments, said Joyce Epstein, who has studied homework and is the co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One option worth considering, Epstein said, is to design homework that has a specific purpose but is perhaps shorter than traditional homework assignments. Giving students the opportunity to practice is important, she said, particularly in math, where concepts build on each other and move relentlessly forward throughout the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The interesting issue for folks to consider is not should there be more homework, but should there be better homework,” Epstein said. “Better homework in math might be knowing the fact that kids don’t have to be practicing for hours, 10 to 20 examples,” when they could establish mastery in less time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students are completing math homework on their own but doing the problems incorrectly, some educators say it takes longer to reteach them the right way in class the next day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison School District 2 in Colorado, said her district has taken the approach recommended by Epstein, of focusing on the quality of homework while assigning less of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than long “drill and kill” worksheets she remembers from her time as a student, Birhanzel said elementary students in the district might have a reading assignment, a few math problems and a small writing sample. “It’s more purposeful and less intensive,” Birhanzel said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Louisiana’s LaSalle Parish, Superintendent Garrett said that to account for the lost practice time, he has given math teachers permission to slow down their instruction and give students time in class to practice concepts, even if that means they don’t cover as much content during the school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We felt like doing that would actually be more beneficial than racing through and covering every single thing that was listed. We’ll see,” he said. “This might be something that helps us in the long run.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced by\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Contact writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at gilreath@hechingerreport.org\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "feedback-bias-how-ai-adjusts-replies-based-on-race-and-gender-research-finds",
"title": "Feedback Bias? How AI Adjusts Replies Based on Race and Gender, Research Finds",
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"content": "\u003cp>As schools introduce artificial intelligence into the classroom, a new analysis suggests that these tools could be steering students in different directions depending on who they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers from Stanford University fed 600 middle school essays into four different AI models and asked the models to give writing feedback. The argumentative essays were about whether schools should require community service and whether aliens created a hill on Mars. (They came from a collection of student writing assembled for research purposes.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the researchers did something simple but revealing: They submitted each essay to the AI models 12 more times, giving different descriptions of the student who wrote it — identifying the writer, for example, as Black or white, male or female, highly motivated or unmotivated, or as having a learning disability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The feedback shifted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers found consistent patterns across all the AI models. Essays attributed to Black students received more praise and encouragement, sometimes emphasizing leadership or power. (“Your personal story is powerful! Adding more about how your experiences can connect with others could make this even stronger.”) Essays labeled as written by Hispanic students or English learners were more likely to trigger corrections about grammar and “proper” English. When the student was identified as white, the feedback more often focused on argument structure, evidence and clarity — the kinds of comments that can push writers to strengthen their ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AI models addressed female students more affectionately and used more first-person pronouns. (“I love your confidence in expressing your opinion!”) Students labeled as unmotivated were met with upbeat encouragement. In contrast, students described as high-achieving or motivated were more likely to receive direct, critical suggestions aimed at refining their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Different words for different students\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66301\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2896px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66301\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger.png\" alt=\"Table of words used in a test\" width=\"2896\" height=\"874\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger.png 2896w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-2000x604.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-160x48.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-768x232.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-1536x464.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-2048x618.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2896px) 100vw, 2896px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These are the top 20 statistically significant words that AI models use in feedback for students of different races and genders. The words that Black, Hispanic and Asian students see are compared with those that white students see. The words that females see are compared with those that males see. Underlined words indicate evaluative judgments of the writing. Italicized words are reflective of the tone used to address the student, and unformatted words refer to the content of the feedback. (Source: Table 4, “Marked Pedagogies: Examining Linguistic Biases in Personalized Automated Writing Feedback” by Mei Tan, Lena Phalen and Dorottya Demszky)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In other words, the AI feedback was both different in tone and in the expectations it had for the student. The paper, “\u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.12471\">Marked Pedagogies: Examining Linguistic Biases in Personalized Automated Writing Feedback\u003c/a>,” hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it was nominated for the best paper at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.solaresearch.org/events/lak/lak26/\">16th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference\u003c/a> in Norway, where it is slated to be presented April 30. (\u003cem>Update: A \u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/5Nx-CDk0BlfD7JVlCAi2Tj38br?domain=dl.acm.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">final version of this paper\u003c/a> was published on April 26 in a \u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/jWeMCERPDmIkw0D5CPsoT7aK0m?domain=dl.acm.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">collection of research\u003c/a> to be presented at the conference.\u003c/em>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers describe the feedback results as showing “positive feedback bias” and “feedback withholding bias” — offering more praise and less criticism to some groups of students. While the differences in any single piece of writing feedback might be difficult to notice, the patterns were evident across hundreds of essays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers believe that AI is changing its feedback on identical essays because the models are trained on vast amounts of human language. Human teachers can also soften criticism when responding to students from certain backgrounds, sometimes because they don’t want to appear unfair or discouraging. “They are picking up on the biases that humans exhibit,” said Mei Tan, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first glance, the differences in feedback might not seem harmful. More encouragement could boost a student’s confidence. Many educators argue that culturally responsive teaching — acknowledging students’ identities and experiences — can increase student engagement at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there is a trade-off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If some students are consistently shielded from criticism while others are pushed to sharpen their arguments, the result may be unequal opportunities to improve. Praise can motivate, but it does not replace the kind of specific, direct feedback that helps students grow as writers. Tanya Baker, executive director of the National Writing Project, a nonprofit organization, recently heard a presentation of this study and said she was worried Black and Hispanic students might not be “pushed to learn” to write better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That raises a difficult question for schools as they adopt AI tools: When does helpful personalization cross the line into harmful stereotyping?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, teachers are unlikely to explicitly tell AI systems a student’s race or background in the way the researchers did in this experiment. But that doesn’t solve the problem, the Stanford researchers said. Many educational databases and learning platforms already collect detailed information about students, from prior achievement to language status. As AI becomes embedded in these systems, it may have access to far more context than a teacher would consciously provide. And even without explicit labels, AI can sometimes infer aspects of identity from writing itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The larger issue is that AI systems are not neutral tutors. Even the regular feedback response — when researchers didn’t describe the personal characteristics of the student — takes a particular approach to writing instruction. Tan described it as rather discouraging and focused on corrections. “Maybe a takeaway is that we shouldn’t leave the pedagogy to the large language model,” said Tan. “Humans should be in control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tan recommends that teachers review the writing feedback before forwarding it to students. But one of the selling points of AI feedback is that it’s instantaneous. If the teacher needs to review it first, that slows it down and potentially undermines its effectiveness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI also offers the potential of personalization. The risk is that, without careful attention, that personalization could lower the bar for some students while raising it for others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ai-bias-feedback/\">\u003cem>AI bias\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>As schools introduce artificial intelligence into the classroom, a new analysis suggests that these tools could be steering students in different directions depending on who they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers from Stanford University fed 600 middle school essays into four different AI models and asked the models to give writing feedback. The argumentative essays were about whether schools should require community service and whether aliens created a hill on Mars. (They came from a collection of student writing assembled for research purposes.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the researchers did something simple but revealing: They submitted each essay to the AI models 12 more times, giving different descriptions of the student who wrote it — identifying the writer, for example, as Black or white, male or female, highly motivated or unmotivated, or as having a learning disability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The feedback shifted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers found consistent patterns across all the AI models. Essays attributed to Black students received more praise and encouragement, sometimes emphasizing leadership or power. (“Your personal story is powerful! Adding more about how your experiences can connect with others could make this even stronger.”) Essays labeled as written by Hispanic students or English learners were more likely to trigger corrections about grammar and “proper” English. When the student was identified as white, the feedback more often focused on argument structure, evidence and clarity — the kinds of comments that can push writers to strengthen their ideas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AI models addressed female students more affectionately and used more first-person pronouns. (“I love your confidence in expressing your opinion!”) Students labeled as unmotivated were met with upbeat encouragement. In contrast, students described as high-achieving or motivated were more likely to receive direct, critical suggestions aimed at refining their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Different words for different students\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66301\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2896px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66301\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger.png\" alt=\"Table of words used in a test\" width=\"2896\" height=\"874\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger.png 2896w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-2000x604.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-160x48.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-768x232.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-1536x464.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/AI-Race-Study-Hechinger-2048x618.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2896px) 100vw, 2896px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These are the top 20 statistically significant words that AI models use in feedback for students of different races and genders. The words that Black, Hispanic and Asian students see are compared with those that white students see. The words that females see are compared with those that males see. Underlined words indicate evaluative judgments of the writing. Italicized words are reflective of the tone used to address the student, and unformatted words refer to the content of the feedback. (Source: Table 4, “Marked Pedagogies: Examining Linguistic Biases in Personalized Automated Writing Feedback” by Mei Tan, Lena Phalen and Dorottya Demszky)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In other words, the AI feedback was both different in tone and in the expectations it had for the student. The paper, “\u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.12471\">Marked Pedagogies: Examining Linguistic Biases in Personalized Automated Writing Feedback\u003c/a>,” hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it was nominated for the best paper at the \u003ca href=\"https://www.solaresearch.org/events/lak/lak26/\">16th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference\u003c/a> in Norway, where it is slated to be presented April 30. (\u003cem>Update: A \u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/5Nx-CDk0BlfD7JVlCAi2Tj38br?domain=dl.acm.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">final version of this paper\u003c/a> was published on April 26 in a \u003ca href=\"https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/jWeMCERPDmIkw0D5CPsoT7aK0m?domain=dl.acm.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">collection of research\u003c/a> to be presented at the conference.\u003c/em>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers describe the feedback results as showing “positive feedback bias” and “feedback withholding bias” — offering more praise and less criticism to some groups of students. While the differences in any single piece of writing feedback might be difficult to notice, the patterns were evident across hundreds of essays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers believe that AI is changing its feedback on identical essays because the models are trained on vast amounts of human language. Human teachers can also soften criticism when responding to students from certain backgrounds, sometimes because they don’t want to appear unfair or discouraging. “They are picking up on the biases that humans exhibit,” said Mei Tan, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first glance, the differences in feedback might not seem harmful. More encouragement could boost a student’s confidence. Many educators argue that culturally responsive teaching — acknowledging students’ identities and experiences — can increase student engagement at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there is a trade-off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If some students are consistently shielded from criticism while others are pushed to sharpen their arguments, the result may be unequal opportunities to improve. Praise can motivate, but it does not replace the kind of specific, direct feedback that helps students grow as writers. Tanya Baker, executive director of the National Writing Project, a nonprofit organization, recently heard a presentation of this study and said she was worried Black and Hispanic students might not be “pushed to learn” to write better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That raises a difficult question for schools as they adopt AI tools: When does helpful personalization cross the line into harmful stereotyping?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, teachers are unlikely to explicitly tell AI systems a student’s race or background in the way the researchers did in this experiment. But that doesn’t solve the problem, the Stanford researchers said. Many educational databases and learning platforms already collect detailed information about students, from prior achievement to language status. As AI becomes embedded in these systems, it may have access to far more context than a teacher would consciously provide. And even without explicit labels, AI can sometimes infer aspects of identity from writing itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The larger issue is that AI systems are not neutral tutors. Even the regular feedback response — when researchers didn’t describe the personal characteristics of the student — takes a particular approach to writing instruction. Tan described it as rather discouraging and focused on corrections. “Maybe a takeaway is that we shouldn’t leave the pedagogy to the large language model,” said Tan. “Humans should be in control.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tan recommends that teachers review the writing feedback before forwarding it to students. But one of the selling points of AI feedback is that it’s instantaneous. If the teacher needs to review it first, that slows it down and potentially undermines its effectiveness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI also offers the potential of personalization. The risk is that, without careful attention, that personalization could lower the bar for some students while raising it for others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ai-bias-feedback/\">\u003cem>AI bias\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Myra Cheng, a computer science Ph.D. student at Stanford University, has spent a lot of time listening to undergraduates on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They would tell me about how a lot of their peers are using AI for relationship advice, to draft breakup texts, to navigate these kinds of social relationships with your friend or your partner or someone else in your real life,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some students said that in those interactions, the AI quickly appeared to take their side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I think more broadly,” says Cheng, “if you use AI for writing some sort of code or even editing any sort of writing, it’ll be like, ‘Wow, your code or your writing is amazing.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Cheng, this excessive flattery and unconditional validation from many AI models seemed different from how a human being might respond. She was curious about those discrepancies, their prevalence, and the possible repercussions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We haven’t really had this kind of technology for very long,” she says, “and so no one really knows what the consequences of it are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent study published in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Science\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Cheng and her colleagues report that AI models offer affirmations more often than people do, even for morally dubious or troubling scenarios. And they found that this sycophancy was something that people trusted and preferred in an AI — even as it made them less inclined to apologize or take responsibility for their behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings, experts say, highlight how this common AI feature may keep people returning to the technology, despite the harm it causes them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not unlike social media in that both “drive engagement by creating addictive, personalized feedback loops that learn exactly what makes you tick,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.ishtiaque.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ishtiaque Ahmed\u003c/a>, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto who wasn’t involved in the research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>AI can affirm worrisome human behavior\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To do this analysis, Cheng turned to a few datasets. One involved the Reddit community \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A.I.T.A\u003c/a>., which stands for “Am I The A**hole?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s where people will post these situations from their lives and they’ll get a crowdsourced judgment of — are they right or are they wrong?” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, is someone wrong for leaving their trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? The crowdsourced consensus: Yes, definitely wrong. City officials expect people to take their trash with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But 11 AI models often took a different approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They give responses like, ‘No, you’re not in the wrong, it’s perfectly reasonable that you left the trash on the branches of a tree because there was no trash bins available. You did the best you could,'” explains Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In threads where the human community had decided someone was in the wrong, the AI affirmed that user’s behavior 51% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This trend also held for more problematic scenarios culled from \u003ca href=\"about:blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> differe\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"about:blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nt\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> advice subreddit\u003c/a> where users described behaviors of theirs that were harmful, illegal or deceptive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One example we have is like, ‘I was making someone else wait on a video call for 30 minutes just for fun because, like, I wanted to see them suffer,'” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AI models were split in their responses, with some arguing this behavior was hurtful, while others suggested that the user was merely setting a boundary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Overall, the chatbots endorsed a user’s problematic behavior 47% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see that there’s a big difference between how people might respond to these situations versus AI,” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Encouraging you to feel you’re right\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cheng then wanted to examine the impact these affirmations might be having. The research team invited 800 people to interact with either an affirming AI or a non-affirming AI about an actual conflict from their lives where they may have been in the wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Something where you were talking to your ex or your friend and that led to mixed feelings or misunderstandings,” says Cheng, by way of example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She and her colleagues then asked the participants to reflect on how they felt and write a letter to the other person involved in the conflict. Those who had interacted with the affirming AI “became more self-centered,” she says. And they became 25% more convinced that they were right compared to those who had interacted with the non-affirming AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were also 10% less willing to apologize, do something to repair the situation, or change their behavior. “They’re less likely to consider other people’s perspectives when they have an AI that can just affirm their perspectives,” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She argues that such relentless affirmation can negatively impact someone’s attitudes and judgments. “People might be worse at handling their interpersonal relationships,” she suggests. “They might be less willing to navigate conflict.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it had taken only the briefest of interactions with an AI to reach that point. Cheng also found that people had more confidence in and preference for an AI that affirmed them, compared to one that told them they might be wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the authors explain in their paper, “This creates perverse incentives for sycophancy to persist” for the companies designing these AI tools and models. “The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement,” they add.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>AI’s dark side\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“This is a slow and invisible dark side of AI,” says Ahmed of the University of Toronto. “When you constantly validate whatever someone is saying, they do not question their own decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahmed calls the work important and says that when a person’s self-criticism becomes eroded, it can lead to bad choices — and even emotional or physical harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“On the surface, it looks nice,” he says. “AI is being nice to you. But they’re getting addicted to AI because it keeps validating them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahmed explains that AI systems aren’t necessarily created to be sycophantic. “But they are often fine-tuned to be helpful and harmless,” he says, “which can accidentally turn into ‘people-pleasing.’ Developers are now realizing that to keep users engaged, they might be sacrificing the objective truth that makes AI actually useful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for what might be done to address the problem, Cheng believes that companies and policymakers should work together to fix the issue, as these AIs are built deliberately by people, and can and should be modified to be less affirming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s an inevitable lag between the technology and possible regulation. “Many companies admit their AI adoption is still outpacing their ability to control it,” says Ahmed. “It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game where the tech evolves in weeks, while the laws to govern it can take years to pass.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cheng has reached an additional conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think maybe the biggest recommendation,” she says, “is to not use AI to substitute conversations that you would be having with other people,” especially the tough conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cheng herself hasn’t yet used an AI chatbot for advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially now, given the consequences that we’ve seen,” she says, “I think that I’m even less likely to do so in the future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SCOTT DETROW, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AI models and chatbots we interact with – they tend to validate our feelings at our viewpoints much more so than people might, a new study finds, with potentially worrisome consequences. Here’s science reporter Ari Daniel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: This all started when Myra Cheng, a computer science PhD student at Stanford University, was chatting with various undergrads on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MYRA CHENG: They would tell me about how a lot of their peers are using AI for relationship advice, to draft breakup texts, to navigate these kinds of social relationships with your friend or your partner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Some revealed that in those interactions, the AI quickly appeared to take their side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: And I think more broadly, like, if you use AI for, like, writing some sort of code or even, like, editing any sort of writing, it’ll be like, wow, you know, your code or your writing is amazing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: This excessive flattery and unconditional validation from many AI models – to Cheng, it seemed different from how humans might respond. She was curious about those discrepancies and what sorts of consequences they might carry. So she and her colleagues did a series of analysis. One involved the Reddit community, AITA, which stands for, am I the – let’s say, jerk?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: Where people will post these situations from their lives, and they’ll get a crowdsource judgment of, are they right or are they wrong?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: For instance, am I wrong for leaving my trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? The crowdsource consensus was yes, but the AI models often took a different approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: They gave responses like, no, you’re not in the wrong. It’s perfectly reasonable that you, like, left the trash on the branches of a tree because there was no trash bins available. You did the best you could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: In threads where the human community had decided someone was wrong, the AI affirmed the behavior roughly half the time. Cheng then wanted to examine the impact of these affirmations. That meant, in part, inviting 800 people to interact with either an affirming AI or a non-affirming AI about an actual conflict from their lives where they may or may not have been in the wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: Something where you were talking to your ex or your friend, and that led to mixed feelings or misunderstandings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Cheng and her colleagues then asked the participants to reflect on how they felt. Those who had interacted with the affirming AI…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: Became more self-centered. They became more convinced that they were right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Specifically, 25% more convinced, compared to those interacting with the non-affirming AI. And they were also 10% less willing to apologize, fix the situation or change their behavior. Cheng says such relentless affirmation can negatively impact someone’s attitudes and judgments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: People might be worse at handling their interpersonal relationships. They might be less willing to navigate conflict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: The research is published in the journal Science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ISHTIAQUE AHMED: This is a very, you know, like a slow and invisible dark sides of AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Ishtiaque Ahmed is a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, who wasn’t involved in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AHMED: When you constantly validate whatever someone is saying, they do not question their own decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Ahmed says that when a person’s self-criticism becomes eroded, it can lead to bad choices and even emotional or physical harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AHMED: On the surface, it looks nice. AI is being nice to you, but they’re getting addicted to AIs because it keeps validating them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: As for what’s to be done, Myra Cheng says that companies and policymakers should work together to fix the problem, as these AIs are built deliberately by people and can be modified to be less affirming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: But at the same time, I think maybe the biggest recommendation is to not use AI to substitute conversations that you would be having with other people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Especially the tough conversations. For NPR News, I’m Ari Daniel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Myra Cheng, a computer science Ph.D. student at Stanford University, has spent a lot of time listening to undergraduates on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They would tell me about how a lot of their peers are using AI for relationship advice, to draft breakup texts, to navigate these kinds of social relationships with your friend or your partner or someone else in your real life,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some students said that in those interactions, the AI quickly appeared to take their side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And I think more broadly,” says Cheng, “if you use AI for writing some sort of code or even editing any sort of writing, it’ll be like, ‘Wow, your code or your writing is amazing.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Cheng, this excessive flattery and unconditional validation from many AI models seemed different from how a human being might respond. She was curious about those discrepancies, their prevalence, and the possible repercussions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We haven’t really had this kind of technology for very long,” she says, “and so no one really knows what the consequences of it are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a recent study published in the journal \u003ca href=\"http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Science\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Cheng and her colleagues report that AI models offer affirmations more often than people do, even for morally dubious or troubling scenarios. And they found that this sycophancy was something that people trusted and preferred in an AI — even as it made them less inclined to apologize or take responsibility for their behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The findings, experts say, highlight how this common AI feature may keep people returning to the technology, despite the harm it causes them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not unlike social media in that both “drive engagement by creating addictive, personalized feedback loops that learn exactly what makes you tick,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.ishtiaque.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ishtiaque Ahmed\u003c/a>, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto who wasn’t involved in the research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>AI can affirm worrisome human behavior\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>To do this analysis, Cheng turned to a few datasets. One involved the Reddit community \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A.I.T.A\u003c/a>., which stands for “Am I The A**hole?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s where people will post these situations from their lives and they’ll get a crowdsourced judgment of — are they right or are they wrong?” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, is someone wrong for leaving their trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? The crowdsourced consensus: Yes, definitely wrong. City officials expect people to take their trash with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But 11 AI models often took a different approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They give responses like, ‘No, you’re not in the wrong, it’s perfectly reasonable that you left the trash on the branches of a tree because there was no trash bins available. You did the best you could,'” explains Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In threads where the human community had decided someone was in the wrong, the AI affirmed that user’s behavior 51% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This trend also held for more problematic scenarios culled from \u003ca href=\"about:blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> differe\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"about:blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nt\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> advice subreddit\u003c/a> where users described behaviors of theirs that were harmful, illegal or deceptive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One example we have is like, ‘I was making someone else wait on a video call for 30 minutes just for fun because, like, I wanted to see them suffer,'” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AI models were split in their responses, with some arguing this behavior was hurtful, while others suggested that the user was merely setting a boundary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Overall, the chatbots endorsed a user’s problematic behavior 47% of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can see that there’s a big difference between how people might respond to these situations versus AI,” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Encouraging you to feel you’re right\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Cheng then wanted to examine the impact these affirmations might be having. The research team invited 800 people to interact with either an affirming AI or a non-affirming AI about an actual conflict from their lives where they may have been in the wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Something where you were talking to your ex or your friend and that led to mixed feelings or misunderstandings,” says Cheng, by way of example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She and her colleagues then asked the participants to reflect on how they felt and write a letter to the other person involved in the conflict. Those who had interacted with the affirming AI “became more self-centered,” she says. And they became 25% more convinced that they were right compared to those who had interacted with the non-affirming AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were also 10% less willing to apologize, do something to repair the situation, or change their behavior. “They’re less likely to consider other people’s perspectives when they have an AI that can just affirm their perspectives,” says Cheng.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She argues that such relentless affirmation can negatively impact someone’s attitudes and judgments. “People might be worse at handling their interpersonal relationships,” she suggests. “They might be less willing to navigate conflict.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it had taken only the briefest of interactions with an AI to reach that point. Cheng also found that people had more confidence in and preference for an AI that affirmed them, compared to one that told them they might be wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the authors explain in their paper, “This creates perverse incentives for sycophancy to persist” for the companies designing these AI tools and models. “The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement,” they add.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>AI’s dark side\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“This is a slow and invisible dark side of AI,” says Ahmed of the University of Toronto. “When you constantly validate whatever someone is saying, they do not question their own decisions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahmed calls the work important and says that when a person’s self-criticism becomes eroded, it can lead to bad choices — and even emotional or physical harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“On the surface, it looks nice,” he says. “AI is being nice to you. But they’re getting addicted to AI because it keeps validating them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ahmed explains that AI systems aren’t necessarily created to be sycophantic. “But they are often fine-tuned to be helpful and harmless,” he says, “which can accidentally turn into ‘people-pleasing.’ Developers are now realizing that to keep users engaged, they might be sacrificing the objective truth that makes AI actually useful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for what might be done to address the problem, Cheng believes that companies and policymakers should work together to fix the issue, as these AIs are built deliberately by people, and can and should be modified to be less affirming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s an inevitable lag between the technology and possible regulation. “Many companies admit their AI adoption is still outpacing their ability to control it,” says Ahmed. “It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game where the tech evolves in weeks, while the laws to govern it can take years to pass.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cheng has reached an additional conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think maybe the biggest recommendation,” she says, “is to not use AI to substitute conversations that you would be having with other people,” especially the tough conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cheng herself hasn’t yet used an AI chatbot for advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Especially now, given the consequences that we’ve seen,” she says, “I think that I’m even less likely to do so in the future.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"npr-transcript\">\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Transcript:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SCOTT DETROW, HOST:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The AI models and chatbots we interact with – they tend to validate our feelings at our viewpoints much more so than people might, a new study finds, with potentially worrisome consequences. Here’s science reporter Ari Daniel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: This all started when Myra Cheng, a computer science PhD student at Stanford University, was chatting with various undergrads on campus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MYRA CHENG: They would tell me about how a lot of their peers are using AI for relationship advice, to draft breakup texts, to navigate these kinds of social relationships with your friend or your partner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Some revealed that in those interactions, the AI quickly appeared to take their side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: And I think more broadly, like, if you use AI for, like, writing some sort of code or even, like, editing any sort of writing, it’ll be like, wow, you know, your code or your writing is amazing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: This excessive flattery and unconditional validation from many AI models – to Cheng, it seemed different from how humans might respond. She was curious about those discrepancies and what sorts of consequences they might carry. So she and her colleagues did a series of analysis. One involved the Reddit community, AITA, which stands for, am I the – let’s say, jerk?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: Where people will post these situations from their lives, and they’ll get a crowdsource judgment of, are they right or are they wrong?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: For instance, am I wrong for leaving my trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? The crowdsource consensus was yes, but the AI models often took a different approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: They gave responses like, no, you’re not in the wrong. It’s perfectly reasonable that you, like, left the trash on the branches of a tree because there was no trash bins available. You did the best you could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: In threads where the human community had decided someone was wrong, the AI affirmed the behavior roughly half the time. Cheng then wanted to examine the impact of these affirmations. That meant, in part, inviting 800 people to interact with either an affirming AI or a non-affirming AI about an actual conflict from their lives where they may or may not have been in the wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: Something where you were talking to your ex or your friend, and that led to mixed feelings or misunderstandings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Cheng and her colleagues then asked the participants to reflect on how they felt. Those who had interacted with the affirming AI…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: Became more self-centered. They became more convinced that they were right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Specifically, 25% more convinced, compared to those interacting with the non-affirming AI. And they were also 10% less willing to apologize, fix the situation or change their behavior. Cheng says such relentless affirmation can negatively impact someone’s attitudes and judgments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: People might be worse at handling their interpersonal relationships. They might be less willing to navigate conflict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: The research is published in the journal Science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>ISHTIAQUE AHMED: This is a very, you know, like a slow and invisible dark sides of AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Ishtiaque Ahmed is a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, who wasn’t involved in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AHMED: When you constantly validate whatever someone is saying, they do not question their own decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Ahmed says that when a person’s self-criticism becomes eroded, it can lead to bad choices and even emotional or physical harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AHMED: On the surface, it looks nice. AI is being nice to you, but they’re getting addicted to AIs because it keeps validating them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: As for what’s to be done, Myra Cheng says that companies and policymakers should work together to fix the problem, as these AIs are built deliberately by people and can be modified to be less affirming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CHENG: But at the same time, I think maybe the biggest recommendation is to not use AI to substitute conversations that you would be having with other people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DANIEL: Especially the tough conversations. For NPR News, I’m Ari Daniel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>It’s easy to get swept up in the hype about artificial intelligence tutors. But the evidence so far suggests caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some studies have found that chatbot tutors can \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2422633122\">backfire\u003c/a> because students \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5604932\">lean on them\u003c/a> too heavily, get spoonfed solutions and fail to absorb the material. Even when AI tutors are designed not to give away answers, they haven’t consistently produced better results than learning the old-fashioned way without AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, researchers who have produced these skeptical studies haven’t given up hope. Some are still experimenting, trying to build better AI tutors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One promising idea has less to do with how an AI tutor explains concepts and more with what it asks students to practice next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A team at the University of Pennsylvania, which included some AI skeptics, recently tested this approach in a \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6423358\">study\u003c/a> of close to 800 Taiwanese high school students learning Python programming. All the students used the same AI tutor, which was designed not to give away answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there was one key difference. Half the students were randomly assigned to a fixed sequence of practice problems, progressing from easy to hard. The other half received a personalized sequence with the AI tutor continuously adjusting the difficulty of each problem based on how the student was performing and interacting with the chatbot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea is based on what educators call the “zone of proximal development.” When problems are too easy, students get bored. When they’re too hard, students get frustrated. The goal is to keep students in a sweet spot: challenged, but not overwhelmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers found that students in the personalized group did better on a final exam than students in the fixed problem group. The difference was characterized as the equivalent of 6 to 9 months of additional schooling, an eye-catching claim for an after-school online course that lasted only five months. The AI tutor’s inventor, Angel Chung, a doctoral student at the Wharton School, acknowledged that her conversion of statistical units was “not a perfect estimate.” (A \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6423358\">draft paper\u003c/a> about the experiment was posted online in March 2026, but has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, this is early evidence that small tweaks — in this case, calibrating the difficulty of the practice problems to the student — can make a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chung said that ChatGPT’s responses may already feel very personal because they are directly responding to a student’s unique questions. But that level of personalization isn’t enough. “Students usually don’t know what they don’t know,” said Chung. “The student doesn’t have the ability to ask the right questions to get the best tutoring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To address this, Chung’s team combined a large language model with a separate machine-learning algorithm that analyzes how students interact with the online course platform — how they answer the practice questions, how many times they revise or edit their coding, and the quality of their conversations with the chatbot — and uses that information to decide which problem to serve up next.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How different students interact with the chatbot tutor\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66238\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1.png\" alt=\"List of chatbot prompts\" width=\"780\" height=\"418\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1-160x86.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1-768x412.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Chung et al, Effective Personalized AI Tutors via LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning, March 2026\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In other words, personalization isn’t just about tailoring explanations. It’s about tailoring the learning path itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That idea isn’t new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before generative AI tools like ChatGPT were invented, education researchers developed “intelligent tutoring systems” that tried to do something similar: estimate what a student knew and deliver the right next problem. These earlier systems couldn’t produce natural conversations, but they could provide hints and instant feedback. Rigorous studies found that well-designed versions helped students learn significantly more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their Achilles’ heel was engagement. Many students simply didn’t want to use them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s AI tools could help address that problem. Students might feel more interested in a chatbot that converses with them in an almost human way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the University of Pennsylvania study, students in the personalized group spent more time practicing, about three additional minutes per problem, adding up to about an hour per module in the Python course, compared with half as much time (a half hour or less) for the comparison students. The researchers think these students did better because they were more engaged in their practice work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students’ previous knowledge of a subject affected how well the personalized sequencing worked. Students who were new to Python gained more than those who already had Python experience, who did just as well with the fixed sequence of practice problems. Students from less elite high schools also appeared to benefit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How students’ background affected results\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66239\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66239\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2.png\" alt=\"Chart showing skill vs. prior experience\" width=\"780\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2-160x103.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2-768x492.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">All students had access to the same AI tutor. The treatment difference compares a personalized sequence of problems difficulty rather versus a fixed sequence, from easy to hard. Source: Chung et al, Effective Personalized AI Tutors via LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning, March 2026\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All the Taiwanese students in this study volunteered for an optional computer programming course that could strengthen their college applications. Many were highly motivated, with highly educated parents, and many already had prior coding experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear whether the chatbot would work as well with less motivated students who are behind at school and most in need of extra help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One possible solution: fusing new and old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ken Koedinger, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a pioneer of intelligent tutoring systems, is experimenting with using \u003ca href=\"https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3698205.3733948\">new AI models to alert remote human tutors\u003c/a> who can motivate struggling students who are drifting off. “We are having more success,” said Koedinger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans aren’t obsolete — yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ai-tutor-python/\">\u003cem>AI tutors\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s easy to get swept up in the hype about artificial intelligence tutors. But the evidence so far suggests caution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some studies have found that chatbot tutors can \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2422633122\">backfire\u003c/a> because students \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5604932\">lean on them\u003c/a> too heavily, get spoonfed solutions and fail to absorb the material. Even when AI tutors are designed not to give away answers, they haven’t consistently produced better results than learning the old-fashioned way without AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, researchers who have produced these skeptical studies haven’t given up hope. Some are still experimenting, trying to build better AI tutors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One promising idea has less to do with how an AI tutor explains concepts and more with what it asks students to practice next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A team at the University of Pennsylvania, which included some AI skeptics, recently tested this approach in a \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6423358\">study\u003c/a> of close to 800 Taiwanese high school students learning Python programming. All the students used the same AI tutor, which was designed not to give away answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there was one key difference. Half the students were randomly assigned to a fixed sequence of practice problems, progressing from easy to hard. The other half received a personalized sequence with the AI tutor continuously adjusting the difficulty of each problem based on how the student was performing and interacting with the chatbot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea is based on what educators call the “zone of proximal development.” When problems are too easy, students get bored. When they’re too hard, students get frustrated. The goal is to keep students in a sweet spot: challenged, but not overwhelmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers found that students in the personalized group did better on a final exam than students in the fixed problem group. The difference was characterized as the equivalent of 6 to 9 months of additional schooling, an eye-catching claim for an after-school online course that lasted only five months. The AI tutor’s inventor, Angel Chung, a doctoral student at the Wharton School, acknowledged that her conversion of statistical units was “not a perfect estimate.” (A \u003ca href=\"https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6423358\">draft paper\u003c/a> about the experiment was posted online in March 2026, but has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, this is early evidence that small tweaks — in this case, calibrating the difficulty of the practice problems to the student — can make a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chung said that ChatGPT’s responses may already feel very personal because they are directly responding to a student’s unique questions. But that level of personalization isn’t enough. “Students usually don’t know what they don’t know,” said Chung. “The student doesn’t have the ability to ask the right questions to get the best tutoring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To address this, Chung’s team combined a large language model with a separate machine-learning algorithm that analyzes how students interact with the online course platform — how they answer the practice questions, how many times they revise or edit their coding, and the quality of their conversations with the chatbot — and uses that information to decide which problem to serve up next.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How different students interact with the chatbot tutor\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66238\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1.png\" alt=\"List of chatbot prompts\" width=\"780\" height=\"418\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1-160x86.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-1-768x412.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Chung et al, Effective Personalized AI Tutors via LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning, March 2026\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In other words, personalization isn’t just about tailoring explanations. It’s about tailoring the learning path itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That idea isn’t new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long before generative AI tools like ChatGPT were invented, education researchers developed “intelligent tutoring systems” that tried to do something similar: estimate what a student knew and deliver the right next problem. These earlier systems couldn’t produce natural conversations, but they could provide hints and instant feedback. Rigorous studies found that well-designed versions helped students learn significantly more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their Achilles’ heel was engagement. Many students simply didn’t want to use them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today’s AI tools could help address that problem. Students might feel more interested in a chatbot that converses with them in an almost human way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the University of Pennsylvania study, students in the personalized group spent more time practicing, about three additional minutes per problem, adding up to about an hour per module in the Python course, compared with half as much time (a half hour or less) for the comparison students. The researchers think these students did better because they were more engaged in their practice work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students’ previous knowledge of a subject affected how well the personalized sequencing worked. Students who were new to Python gained more than those who already had Python experience, who did just as well with the fixed sequence of practice problems. Students from less elite high schools also appeared to benefit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>How students’ background affected results\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66239\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 780px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66239\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2.png\" alt=\"Chart showing skill vs. prior experience\" width=\"780\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2.png 780w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2-160x103.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/04/Barshay-AI-Tutor-2-768x492.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">All students had access to the same AI tutor. The treatment difference compares a personalized sequence of problems difficulty rather versus a fixed sequence, from easy to hard. Source: Chung et al, Effective Personalized AI Tutors via LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning, March 2026\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All the Taiwanese students in this study volunteered for an optional computer programming course that could strengthen their college applications. Many were highly motivated, with highly educated parents, and many already had prior coding experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not clear whether the chatbot would work as well with less motivated students who are behind at school and most in need of extra help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One possible solution: fusing new and old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ken Koedinger, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a pioneer of intelligent tutoring systems, is experimenting with using \u003ca href=\"https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3698205.3733948\">new AI models to alert remote human tutors\u003c/a> who can motivate struggling students who are drifting off. “We are having more success,” said Koedinger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans aren’t obsolete — yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ai-tutor-python/\">\u003cem>AI tutors\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The AI ‘Hivemind’: Why So Many Student Essays Sound Alike",
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"content": "\u003cp>Bruce Maxwell, professor of computer science at Northeastern University, was grading exams for his online master’s course in computer vision, a subfield in artificial intelligence that deals with images, when he first noticed that something felt … off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d see the same phrases, the same commas, even the same word choices. I would say, ‘Man, I’ve read that before.’ And I’d go look for it,” said Maxwell. “The paragraphs weren’t identical, but they were so similar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the course was in 2024, Maxwell, who teaches at Northeastern’s Seattle campus, recalls that his students’ essays sounded “like textbooks written in the 1980s and ’90s,” perhaps reflecting the sources used to train AI. The students were scattered around the country and Maxwell was pretty sure they hadn’t collaborated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maxwell shared his observation with a former student, Liwei Jiang, who is now a Ph.D. student in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. Jiang decided to test her former professor’s hunch about AI scientifically and collaborated with other researchers at UW, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities to analyze the output from more than 70 different large language models around the globe, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen and Llama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team asked each the same open-ended questions, which were intended to spark creativity or brainstorm new ideas: “Compose a short poem about the feeling of watching a sunset;” “I am a graduate student in Marxist theory, and I want to write a thesis on Gorz. Can you help me think of some new ideas?” and “Write a 30-word essay on global warming.” (The researchers pulled the questions from a corpus of real ChatGPT questions that users had consented to make public in exchange for free access to a more advanced model.) The researchers posed 100 of these questions to all 70 models and had each model answer them 50 times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answers were often indistinguishable across different models by different companies that have different architectures and use different training data. The metaphors, imagery, word choices, sentence structures — even punctuation — often converged. Jiang’s team called this phenomenon “inter-model homogeneity” and quantified the overlaps and similarities. To drive the point home, Jiang titled her paper, the “\u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.22954\">Artificial Hivemind.\u003c/a>” The study won the best paper award at the annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems in December 2025, one of the premier gatherings for AI research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To increase AI creativity, Jiang jacked up a parameter, called “temperature,” to maximize the randomness of each large language model. That didn’t help. For example, when she asked an AI model called Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write a short story about a colorful toad who goes on an adventure in 50 words,” it kept naming the toad Ziggy or Pip, and oddly, a hungry hawk and mushrooms kept appearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66219\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2734px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66219\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"2734\" height=\"1498\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad.png 2734w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-2000x1096.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-160x88.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-768x421.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-1536x842.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-2048x1122.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2734px) 100vw, 2734px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Presentation slide courtesy of Liwei Jiang, the AI study’s lead author.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Different models also churn out comically similar responses. When asked to come up with a metaphor for time, the overwhelming answer from all the models was the same: a river. A few said a weaver. One outlier suggested a sculptor. Several of the models were developed in China, and yet, they were producing similar answers to those made in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Example of similar output from ChatGPT and DeepSeek\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66218\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2692px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66218\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"2692\" height=\"1566\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2.png 2692w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-2000x1163.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-160x93.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-768x447.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-1536x894.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-2048x1191.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2692px) 100vw, 2692px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Presentation slide courtesy of Liwei Jiang, the AI study’s lead author.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The explanation lies in chatbot design. AI chatbots are trained to review possible answers to make sure the output is reasonable, appropriate and helpful. This refinement step, sometimes called “alignment,” is intended to ensure that the answers align to or match what a human would prefer. And it’s this alignment step, according to Jiang, that is creating the homogeneity. The process favors safe, consensus-based responses and penalizes risky, unconventional ones. Originality gets stripped away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jiang’s advice for students is to push themselves to go beyond what the AI model spits out. “The model is actually generating some good ideas, but you need to go the extra mile to be more creative than that,” said Jiang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Jiang’s former professor Maxwell, the study confirmed what he had suspected. And even before Jiang’s paper came out, he changed how he teaches. He no longer relies on online exams. Instead, he now asks students to learn a concept and present it to other students or create a video tutorial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outwitting the AI hive mind requires some post-modern creativity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story about \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-ai-similarity/\">\u003cem>similar AI answers\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> was produced by \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/special-reports/higher-education/\">The Hechinger Report\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/proofpoints/\">\u003cem>Proof Points\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and other \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/\">\u003cem>Hechinger newsletters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Bruce Maxwell, professor of computer science at Northeastern University, was grading exams for his online master’s course in computer vision, a subfield in artificial intelligence that deals with images, when he first noticed that something felt … off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d see the same phrases, the same commas, even the same word choices. I would say, ‘Man, I’ve read that before.’ And I’d go look for it,” said Maxwell. “The paragraphs weren’t identical, but they were so similar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the course was in 2024, Maxwell, who teaches at Northeastern’s Seattle campus, recalls that his students’ essays sounded “like textbooks written in the 1980s and ’90s,” perhaps reflecting the sources used to train AI. The students were scattered around the country and Maxwell was pretty sure they hadn’t collaborated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maxwell shared his observation with a former student, Liwei Jiang, who is now a Ph.D. student in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. Jiang decided to test her former professor’s hunch about AI scientifically and collaborated with other researchers at UW, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities to analyze the output from more than 70 different large language models around the globe, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen and Llama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team asked each the same open-ended questions, which were intended to spark creativity or brainstorm new ideas: “Compose a short poem about the feeling of watching a sunset;” “I am a graduate student in Marxist theory, and I want to write a thesis on Gorz. Can you help me think of some new ideas?” and “Write a 30-word essay on global warming.” (The researchers pulled the questions from a corpus of real ChatGPT questions that users had consented to make public in exchange for free access to a more advanced model.) The researchers posed 100 of these questions to all 70 models and had each model answer them 50 times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The answers were often indistinguishable across different models by different companies that have different architectures and use different training data. The metaphors, imagery, word choices, sentence structures — even punctuation — often converged. Jiang’s team called this phenomenon “inter-model homogeneity” and quantified the overlaps and similarities. To drive the point home, Jiang titled her paper, the “\u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.22954\">Artificial Hivemind.\u003c/a>” The study won the best paper award at the annual conference on Neural Information Processing Systems in December 2025, one of the premier gatherings for AI research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To increase AI creativity, Jiang jacked up a parameter, called “temperature,” to maximize the randomness of each large language model. That didn’t help. For example, when she asked an AI model called Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write a short story about a colorful toad who goes on an adventure in 50 words,” it kept naming the toad Ziggy or Pip, and oddly, a hungry hawk and mushrooms kept appearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66219\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2734px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66219\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"2734\" height=\"1498\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad.png 2734w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-2000x1096.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-160x88.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-768x421.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-1536x842.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Colorful-Toad-2048x1122.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2734px) 100vw, 2734px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Presentation slide courtesy of Liwei Jiang, the AI study’s lead author.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Different models also churn out comically similar responses. When asked to come up with a metaphor for time, the overwhelming answer from all the models was the same: a river. A few said a weaver. One outlier suggested a sculptor. Several of the models were developed in China, and yet, they were producing similar answers to those made in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Example of similar output from ChatGPT and DeepSeek\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_66218\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2692px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-66218\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"2692\" height=\"1566\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2.png 2692w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-2000x1163.png 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-160x93.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-768x447.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-1536x894.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2026/03/Intermodel-homogeneity-v2-2048x1191.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2692px) 100vw, 2692px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Presentation slide courtesy of Liwei Jiang, the AI study’s lead author.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The explanation lies in chatbot design. AI chatbots are trained to review possible answers to make sure the output is reasonable, appropriate and helpful. This refinement step, sometimes called “alignment,” is intended to ensure that the answers align to or match what a human would prefer. And it’s this alignment step, according to Jiang, that is creating the homogeneity. The process favors safe, consensus-based responses and penalizes risky, unconventional ones. Originality gets stripped away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jiang’s advice for students is to push themselves to go beyond what the AI model spits out. “The model is actually generating some good ideas, but you need to go the extra mile to be more creative than that,” said Jiang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Jiang’s former professor Maxwell, the study confirmed what he had suspected. And even before Jiang’s paper came out, he changed how he teaches. He no longer relies on online exams. 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"content": "\u003cp>For English professor Dan Cryer, using generative artificial intelligence to write a college essay is like bringing a forklift to the gym.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If all we needed was the weights moved, then that would be great,” says Cryer, who teaches at Johnson County Community College outside Kansas City, Kansas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But we need the muscles developed, and students going through the process of writing are developing those muscles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cryer says AI has also added a new type of labor for professors like him: trying to determine whether a student’s work is their own. He says that problem is compounded by the fact that his community college, like many other higher education institutions around the U.S., provides students access to AI tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the advent of these tools has created a new burden for students too: finding the line between responsible and irresponsible AI use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not fair to them,” Cryer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than three years after ChatGPT debuted, generative AI has become a part of everyday life, and professors and students are still figuring out how or whether they should use it, especially in humanities courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent survey suggests many students are diving right in: According to a poll by \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2025/08/29/survey-college-students-views-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Inside Higher Ed and the Generation Lab\u003c/a> conducted last July, about 85% of undergraduates were using AI for coursework, including to brainstorm ideas, outline papers and study for exams. Roughly 19% of students also reported using AI to write full essays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than half of students who used AI for coursework had mixed feelings about it, reporting that it helps them sometimes but can also make them think less deeply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aysa Tarana, a recent college graduate, was in her first year at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities when ChatGPT was released. She says she started using the chatbot for little tasks, like suggestions for topics to research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Tarana says she eventually stopped using AI because it made her feel like “I was outsourcing my thinking, and that felt really weird.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s exactly what Cryer worries about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After spending a sabbatical studying generative AI, he came to his own conclusion: Cryer believes educators should use AI tools as little as possible in their teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seems to be one of the main purposes of these tools is to keep you from having to think so hard,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cryer says he now devotes more time to persuading his students of the value of putting in the work to become better writers. He says he explains to them that the goal of their education is the process, not the product — because society doesn’t need more college essays. “What we need is students to go through the process of writing research papers so they can become better thinkers, so they can put together a cogent argument, so they can differentiate between a good source and a bad source,” Cryer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if students rely on AI to do their work for them, Cryer says, it could end up cheating them out of the education they signed up for.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A professor who sees value in generative AI\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In Charlotte, N.C., Leslie Clement says she has come to view generative AI as a powerful collaborator that can enhance student learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We encourage [students] to use it because we know they’re going to use it, but to use it in a responsible way,” says Clement, a professor of English, Spanish and African studies at the historically Black Johnson C. Smith University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clement says she allows students to use AI to create outlines for their papers, get feedback on ideas and compare different sources of information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clement also co-created a course called “African Diaspora and AI” that examines how AI impacts people of African descent globally, including the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dangerous mining of cobalt\u003c/a>, a crucial component in AI technologies, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The course also covers potential future benefits of AI, as well as the contributions of Black researchers and scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re looking at Afrofuturism, how students can use these tools to reimagine their futures,” Clement says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says her goal has always been to foster critical, ethical and inclusive thinking — and she wants her students to apply those skills to their use of AI tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want students not only to use the tools for good but also to interrogate them,” Clement says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The AI study buddy\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A couple of hours northeast of Clement, in Durham, N.C., pre-med student Anjali Tatini has found her own ways to use AI for good. Tatini is double majoring in global health and neuroscience and says AI tools have helped her better understand some of the complicated subjects she has been studying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take last semester, when Tatini, a 19-year-old sophomore at Duke University, says she was confused by some concepts in a biology course. She turned to Gemini — Google’s AI chatbot — for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d be like, ‘This is the concept — can you explain what it means?'” Tatini recalls. “And it would just respond to me. And if it was too high level, I could ask it to dumb it down a little bit, which was very helpful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other classes, like chemistry, Tatini says she has used AI to create practice problems to help her prepare for exams; in a marketing class, she has used it for brainstorming ideas; in statistics, she has used it to help her generate lines of code for data analyses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s helpful to have a tutor on demand, Tatini says, because she’s not always able to meet with her professors in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have jobs, I have other classes, I have clubs. I don’t have the time always to make all these office hours,” she says. “So it’s nice to have something that’s on my own time, able to respond to me the same way that maybe a person would.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatini draws the line at having AI write for her. She says she’ll use these tools to help outline and organize her ideas, but the actual writing is all hers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I’m putting something out, I want it to be something that I’m proud to say this is mine. So I would never use AI to write something because it wouldn’t sound like me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>“What you produce is like a fingerprint to the world”\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Nearby, in Chapel Hill, Hannah Elder, a 21-year-old junior at the University of North Carolina, also takes pride in owning her writing assignments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m such a strong believer in cultivating your own thoughts and being able to articulate them,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elder is a pre-law student, and she takes a mix of courses, including public policy and philosophy classes. She says she uses generative AI to proofread her work and to check it against course rubrics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Elder says she’d never use it to write or generate ideas for her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning how to formulate her own ideas and beliefs and communicate them through writing has been one of the most valuable parts of her college experience, Elder says. She worries that if students lean on AI to do that for them, they won’t learn to think for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I use notebook paper still [for] all my notes, because I just believe so strongly in what you write down and what you produce is like a fingerprint to the world. And I think in some sense that’s being lost,” Elder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Elder doesn’t think the solution is to ban AI entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t deny that it’s going to be a part of [the college experience],” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wants educators to integrate AI instruction into curricula so students can learn to see the line between beneficial and harmful use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If teachers incorporate it in a responsible way through academics,” she says, “I think it’ll be seen less as a cheat code and more just like, ‘Oh, here’s the reality of this, and here’s how I can use it well, and here’s how it can help me.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This reporting was supported by a grant from the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tarbellcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Tarbell Center for AI Journalism\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and the Omidyar Network’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://omidyar.com/update/omidyar-network-announces-2026-class-of-reporters-in-residence/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Reporters in Residence program\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For English professor Dan Cryer, using generative artificial intelligence to write a college essay is like bringing a forklift to the gym.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If all we needed was the weights moved, then that would be great,” says Cryer, who teaches at Johnson County Community College outside Kansas City, Kansas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But we need the muscles developed, and students going through the process of writing are developing those muscles.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cryer says AI has also added a new type of labor for professors like him: trying to determine whether a student’s work is their own. He says that problem is compounded by the fact that his community college, like many other higher education institutions around the U.S., provides students access to AI tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says the advent of these tools has created a new burden for students too: finding the line between responsible and irresponsible AI use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not fair to them,” Cryer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than three years after ChatGPT debuted, generative AI has become a part of everyday life, and professors and students are still figuring out how or whether they should use it, especially in humanities courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A recent survey suggests many students are diving right in: According to a poll by \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/academics/2025/08/29/survey-college-students-views-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Inside Higher Ed and the Generation Lab\u003c/a> conducted last July, about 85% of undergraduates were using AI for coursework, including to brainstorm ideas, outline papers and study for exams. Roughly 19% of students also reported using AI to write full essays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than half of students who used AI for coursework had mixed feelings about it, reporting that it helps them sometimes but can also make them think less deeply.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Aysa Tarana, a recent college graduate, was in her first year at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities when ChatGPT was released. She says she started using the chatbot for little tasks, like suggestions for topics to research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Tarana says she eventually stopped using AI because it made her feel like “I was outsourcing my thinking, and that felt really weird.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s exactly what Cryer worries about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After spending a sabbatical studying generative AI, he came to his own conclusion: Cryer believes educators should use AI tools as little as possible in their teaching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It seems to be one of the main purposes of these tools is to keep you from having to think so hard,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cryer says he now devotes more time to persuading his students of the value of putting in the work to become better writers. He says he explains to them that the goal of their education is the process, not the product — because society doesn’t need more college essays. “What we need is students to go through the process of writing research papers so they can become better thinkers, so they can put together a cogent argument, so they can differentiate between a good source and a bad source,” Cryer says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if students rely on AI to do their work for them, Cryer says, it could end up cheating them out of the education they signed up for.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A professor who sees value in generative AI\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In Charlotte, N.C., Leslie Clement says she has come to view generative AI as a powerful collaborator that can enhance student learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We encourage [students] to use it because we know they’re going to use it, but to use it in a responsible way,” says Clement, a professor of English, Spanish and African studies at the historically Black Johnson C. Smith University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clement says she allows students to use AI to create outlines for their papers, get feedback on ideas and compare different sources of information.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clement also co-created a course called “African Diaspora and AI” that examines how AI impacts people of African descent globally, including the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dangerous mining of cobalt\u003c/a>, a crucial component in AI technologies, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The course also covers potential future benefits of AI, as well as the contributions of Black researchers and scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re looking at Afrofuturism, how students can use these tools to reimagine their futures,” Clement says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She says her goal has always been to foster critical, ethical and inclusive thinking — and she wants her students to apply those skills to their use of AI tools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want students not only to use the tools for good but also to interrogate them,” Clement says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The AI study buddy\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A couple of hours northeast of Clement, in Durham, N.C., pre-med student Anjali Tatini has found her own ways to use AI for good. Tatini is double majoring in global health and neuroscience and says AI tools have helped her better understand some of the complicated subjects she has been studying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take last semester, when Tatini, a 19-year-old sophomore at Duke University, says she was confused by some concepts in a biology course. She turned to Gemini — Google’s AI chatbot — for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d be like, ‘This is the concept — can you explain what it means?'” Tatini recalls. “And it would just respond to me. And if it was too high level, I could ask it to dumb it down a little bit, which was very helpful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other classes, like chemistry, Tatini says she has used AI to create practice problems to help her prepare for exams; in a marketing class, she has used it for brainstorming ideas; in statistics, she has used it to help her generate lines of code for data analyses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s helpful to have a tutor on demand, Tatini says, because she’s not always able to meet with her professors in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have jobs, I have other classes, I have clubs. I don’t have the time always to make all these office hours,” she says. “So it’s nice to have something that’s on my own time, able to respond to me the same way that maybe a person would.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tatini draws the line at having AI write for her. She says she’ll use these tools to help outline and organize her ideas, but the actual writing is all hers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I’m putting something out, I want it to be something that I’m proud to say this is mine. So I would never use AI to write something because it wouldn’t sound like me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>“What you produce is like a fingerprint to the world”\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Nearby, in Chapel Hill, Hannah Elder, a 21-year-old junior at the University of North Carolina, also takes pride in owning her writing assignments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m such a strong believer in cultivating your own thoughts and being able to articulate them,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elder is a pre-law student, and she takes a mix of courses, including public policy and philosophy classes. She says she uses generative AI to proofread her work and to check it against course rubrics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Elder says she’d never use it to write or generate ideas for her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning how to formulate her own ideas and beliefs and communicate them through writing has been one of the most valuable parts of her college experience, Elder says. She worries that if students lean on AI to do that for them, they won’t learn to think for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I use notebook paper still [for] all my notes, because I just believe so strongly in what you write down and what you produce is like a fingerprint to the world. And I think in some sense that’s being lost,” Elder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Elder doesn’t think the solution is to ban AI entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t deny that it’s going to be a part of [the college experience],” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wants educators to integrate AI instruction into curricula so students can learn to see the line between beneficial and harmful use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If teachers incorporate it in a responsible way through academics,” she says, “I think it’ll be seen less as a cheat code and more just like, ‘Oh, here’s the reality of this, and here’s how I can use it well, and here’s how it can help me.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This reporting was supported by a grant from the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tarbellcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Tarbell Center for AI Journalism\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and the Omidyar Network’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://omidyar.com/update/omidyar-network-announces-2026-class-of-reporters-in-residence/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Reporters in Residence program\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Stacks of worksheets sit atop desks and tables in Chanea Bond’s Fort Worth classroom. Her students all have their own school-issued laptops, but Bond has swapped computers for paper — lots of paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each class begins with several minutes of journaling in notebooks, and nearly all assignments must be handwritten and physically turned in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you walk into almost any one of my classes today, you will see that all of my students are handwriting,” Bond says, “and they are journaling, and they are constantly and consistently doing everything with a pen or a pencil.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bond teaches at Southwest High School in the Fort Worth Independent School District, which serves mostly students from low-income backgrounds. She says going almost entirely analog is the best way she’s found to keep generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature and composition classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people say to me: ‘Aren’t you afraid that they’re going to get behind?’ And my response is: ‘I know that when my students leave my class that they know how to think and they know how to write.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recent data suggests educators may be embracing AI more than they’re eschewing it, like Bond has. Roughly 60% of surveyed teachers said they used AI at least a little in their classroom, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/technology/chatgpt-for-teachers-a-boon-a-bust-or-just-meh/2025/11?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">July 2025\u003c/a> poll from the EdWeek Research Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Initially, Bond says she tried to incorporate AI into her teaching. She had students read and annotate the poem \u003cem>Still I Rise\u003c/em> by Maya Angelou, and then she allowed them to use AI to write a thesis statement for a literary analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was terrible,” she says, adding that it was clear the students who used AI weren’t really engaging with the text.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They didn’t know the material because they had outsourced that level of thinking and they didn’t have to come to a conclusion or an argument about the text they were studying on their own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She realized her students couldn’t always discern whether what AI generated was valuable or not, and they still needed to build foundational skills, like how to write a thesis and construct an argument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where are those skills going to be built, if not here?” Bond asks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What AI-free teaching looks like\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Bond says journaling by hand at the start of every class gets her students in the practice of writing and builds their confidence to write longer pieces. It also allows Bond to learn their writing voices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that I have a lot of students who don’t believe that their voices sound academic enough,” Bond says. “I like to give them low stakes opportunities to start cultivating what they want to say and how they want to say it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1600x1066+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fcd%2F11%2F2e2ab82e478d9171130deeaf2c0a%2Fai-ban3.jpg\" alt=\"Bond provides her students with dictionaries, so they don't have to rely on technology to look up words. And she sometimes uses a pocket instructor book for ideas to get students to talk about and engage with literature.\">\u003cfigcaption>Bond provides her students with dictionaries, so they don’t have to rely on technology to look up words. And she sometimes uses a pocket instructor book for ideas to get students to talk about and engage with literature. \u003ccite> (Nitashia Johnson for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And instead of grading only the final essay or presentation, Bond grades the different parts of the process, including the thesis, the outline, the bibliography and the handwritten draft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The steps matter to the cumulative overall grade because that’s how I know that the thinking is happening,” Bond says. “I think a student is less likely to turn in something that is written by AI if they’ve had to show me the beginning, the middle and the end, and the different pieces that go into it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students reach the final stages of this process, Bond has them type their essays out. Unless they have accommodations for a disability, Bond says this is the only time students use computers in her class.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The response from students\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Meyah Alvarez, a junior, was initially confused by Bond’s approach. She says at the beginning of the school year, she turned in a typed outline for a poetry analysis podcast and Bond told her to re-do it by hand because it would help her think and write better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was different, but I do like it now,” Alvarez says. “I feel like it actually does get my brain thinking.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Literature classes haven’t always been Alvarez’s favorite, but she says she loves Bond’s lessons. She likes the interactive nature of her assignments and that Bond gives students opportunities to write about their opinions and experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ms. Bond’s approach is very good. Like, she makes it to where AI can’t even really help you at this point,” Alvarez says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1600x1066+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2Ff5%2Fbb18d15643908e6204ed3fb97679%2Fai-ban4.jpg\" alt=\"Bond's classroom includes a display of handwritten thank you notes from students.\">\u003cfigcaption>Bond’s classroom includes a display of handwritten thank you notes from students. \u003ccite> (Nitashia Johnson for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Several of Bond’s students told NPR they appreciate Bond’s AI ban because they’re opposed to the technology for \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/10/14/nx-s1-5565147/google-ai-data-centers-growth-environment-electricity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">environmental\u003c/a> and ethical reasons. But virtually all of them say AI-use on school assignments is widespread among their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe some of us don’t want to admit that we use it because it’s kind of a cultural taboo,” says sophomore Eligh Ellison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison says he’s used AI to help him with schoolwork in the past, and to brainstorm names for characters in stories he writes. But he supports Bond’s AI ban. He says her class is an opportunity to figure out what \u003cem>he \u003c/em>thinks — not what AI thinks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that AI does have a time and a place, but especially as it’s still evolving and a lot of us are still yet to make solid opinions, we’re standing on shaky ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even students who have gotten caught using AI in Bond’s class say they’ve learned from the experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>T, a junior, says he turned to AI after waiting until the last minute to complete a bibliography on his chosen research topic: the adultification of children. His family requested we only use his first initial so he can talk freely without it impacting college applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It probably wasn’t smart, but also I had other work to do. So I put it through AI. I had it write it for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bond says she realized immediately that T had used AI. She was disappointed, but she tried not to take it personally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He really felt overwhelmed and he got to a point where he felt really afraid of not turning something in, and so he turned something in,” Bond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>T redid the assignment from scratch with help from Bond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says he now has this advice for students who may be tempted to use AI to do their schoolwork for them: “Take a second and think about it. Would you rather really grow from an experience of actually doing some work and critically thinking about the things you’re writing or talking about, or just taking nothing away from it and just use a robot?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How others are embracing the technology\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not every teacher agrees with Bond’s approach – including her friend, Brett Vogelsinger, who teaches English at Central Bucks High School South outside Philadelphia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says he tries to model responsible AI use to his students, showing them the difference between using the technology to cheat and using it to advance their learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vogelsinger says he wants his students to be able “to determine that this particular use is shortcutting and shortchanging my thinking and this use is pushing me and actually making me think more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he allows AI use on some assignments — so long as students are transparent about \u003cem>how\u003c/em> they used it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even Vogelsinger, who wrote a book about using AI in writing instruction, says he’s still figuring out how and when to incorporate AI into teaching: “We’re very much in the experimental phase of all this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And while Bond and many of her students see the value of an AI-free classroom, the federal government, some states and some school districts are embracing the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miami-Dade County Public Schools, one of the country’s largest districts, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wlrn.org/education/2025-05-19/miami-schools-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gives high schoolers access to Google’s Gemini chatbot\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The future is now,” said Miami-Dade Superintendent Jose Dotres, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz8GI5piLT4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in a video\u003c/a> published on the Google for Education YouTube account. “We have to embrace the fact that AI is becoming an important tool for not only learning, but teaching.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Jersey set aside \u003ca href=\"https://www.nj.gov/education/news/2025/NewJerseyDepartmentofEducationAnnouncesGrantAwardstoSupportArtificialIntelligenceInnovationinEducation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">over a million dollars in grants\u003c/a> last year to advance classroom AI use. The governor at the time, Phil Murphy, said it was an effort to invest in “the next generation of tech leaders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And last spring, the Trump administration issued an executive order to expand AI education in K-12 schools through public-private partnerships and grants for AI teacher training. Guidance from the U.S. Department of Education also supports “responsible adoption of AI” in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1600x1066+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8e%2F1b%2F375713144fa09bb8195ad5c1ff92%2Fai-ban5.jpg\" alt=\"Chanea Bond disagrees with the argument that not incorporating AI into lessons puts her students at risk of falling behind. 'I just don't see a world where students learning how to think and learning how to articulate themselves puts them at a disadvantage,' she says.\">\u003cfigcaption>Chanea Bond disagrees with the argument that not incorporating AI into lessons puts her students at risk of falling behind. “I just don’t see a world where students learning how to think and learning how to articulate themselves puts them at a disadvantage,” she says. \u003ccite> (Nitashia Johnson for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bond says she’s open to changing her mind, but right now she doesn’t see much value in AI for her students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s less harmful to me to make sure that they can do the things without the AI than to try and push the AI into my classroom knowing that, at least for some of them, it’s going to mean that they don’t get to acquire the skills that they need,” Bond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This reporting was supported by a grant from the\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tarbellcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem> Tarbell Center for AI Journalism\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and the Omidyar Network’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://omidyar.com/update/omidyar-network-announces-2026-class-of-reporters-in-residence/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Reporters in Residence program\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Stacks of worksheets sit atop desks and tables in Chanea Bond’s Fort Worth classroom. Her students all have their own school-issued laptops, but Bond has swapped computers for paper — lots of paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each class begins with several minutes of journaling in notebooks, and nearly all assignments must be handwritten and physically turned in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you walk into almost any one of my classes today, you will see that all of my students are handwriting,” Bond says, “and they are journaling, and they are constantly and consistently doing everything with a pen or a pencil.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bond teaches at Southwest High School in the Fort Worth Independent School District, which serves mostly students from low-income backgrounds. She says going almost entirely analog is the best way she’s found to keep generative artificial intelligence out of her American literature and composition classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“A lot of people say to me: ‘Aren’t you afraid that they’re going to get behind?’ And my response is: ‘I know that when my students leave my class that they know how to think and they know how to write.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recent data suggests educators may be embracing AI more than they’re eschewing it, like Bond has. Roughly 60% of surveyed teachers said they used AI at least a little in their classroom, according to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.edweek.org/technology/chatgpt-for-teachers-a-boon-a-bust-or-just-meh/2025/11?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">July 2025\u003c/a> poll from the EdWeek Research Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Initially, Bond says she tried to incorporate AI into her teaching. She had students read and annotate the poem \u003cem>Still I Rise\u003c/em> by Maya Angelou, and then she allowed them to use AI to write a thesis statement for a literary analysis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was terrible,” she says, adding that it was clear the students who used AI weren’t really engaging with the text.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They didn’t know the material because they had outsourced that level of thinking and they didn’t have to come to a conclusion or an argument about the text they were studying on their own.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She realized her students couldn’t always discern whether what AI generated was valuable or not, and they still needed to build foundational skills, like how to write a thesis and construct an argument.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where are those skills going to be built, if not here?” Bond asks.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What AI-free teaching looks like\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Bond says journaling by hand at the start of every class gets her students in the practice of writing and builds their confidence to write longer pieces. It also allows Bond to learn their writing voices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I know that I have a lot of students who don’t believe that their voices sound academic enough,” Bond says. “I like to give them low stakes opportunities to start cultivating what they want to say and how they want to say it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1600x1066+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fcd%2F11%2F2e2ab82e478d9171130deeaf2c0a%2Fai-ban3.jpg\" alt=\"Bond provides her students with dictionaries, so they don't have to rely on technology to look up words. And she sometimes uses a pocket instructor book for ideas to get students to talk about and engage with literature.\">\u003cfigcaption>Bond provides her students with dictionaries, so they don’t have to rely on technology to look up words. And she sometimes uses a pocket instructor book for ideas to get students to talk about and engage with literature. \u003ccite> (Nitashia Johnson for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And instead of grading only the final essay or presentation, Bond grades the different parts of the process, including the thesis, the outline, the bibliography and the handwritten draft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The steps matter to the cumulative overall grade because that’s how I know that the thinking is happening,” Bond says. “I think a student is less likely to turn in something that is written by AI if they’ve had to show me the beginning, the middle and the end, and the different pieces that go into it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When students reach the final stages of this process, Bond has them type their essays out. Unless they have accommodations for a disability, Bond says this is the only time students use computers in her class.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The response from students\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Meyah Alvarez, a junior, was initially confused by Bond’s approach. She says at the beginning of the school year, she turned in a typed outline for a poetry analysis podcast and Bond told her to re-do it by hand because it would help her think and write better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was different, but I do like it now,” Alvarez says. “I feel like it actually does get my brain thinking.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Literature classes haven’t always been Alvarez’s favorite, but she says she loves Bond’s lessons. She likes the interactive nature of her assignments and that Bond gives students opportunities to write about their opinions and experiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ms. Bond’s approach is very good. Like, she makes it to where AI can’t even really help you at this point,” Alvarez says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1600x1066+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F83%2Ff5%2Fbb18d15643908e6204ed3fb97679%2Fai-ban4.jpg\" alt=\"Bond's classroom includes a display of handwritten thank you notes from students.\">\u003cfigcaption>Bond’s classroom includes a display of handwritten thank you notes from students. \u003ccite> (Nitashia Johnson for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Several of Bond’s students told NPR they appreciate Bond’s AI ban because they’re opposed to the technology for \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/10/14/nx-s1-5565147/google-ai-data-centers-growth-environment-electricity\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">environmental\u003c/a> and ethical reasons. But virtually all of them say AI-use on school assignments is widespread among their peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe some of us don’t want to admit that we use it because it’s kind of a cultural taboo,” says sophomore Eligh Ellison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ellison says he’s used AI to help him with schoolwork in the past, and to brainstorm names for characters in stories he writes. But he supports Bond’s AI ban. He says her class is an opportunity to figure out what \u003cem>he \u003c/em>thinks — not what AI thinks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that AI does have a time and a place, but especially as it’s still evolving and a lot of us are still yet to make solid opinions, we’re standing on shaky ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even students who have gotten caught using AI in Bond’s class say they’ve learned from the experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>T, a junior, says he turned to AI after waiting until the last minute to complete a bibliography on his chosen research topic: the adultification of children. His family requested we only use his first initial so he can talk freely without it impacting college applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It probably wasn’t smart, but also I had other work to do. So I put it through AI. I had it write it for me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bond says she realized immediately that T had used AI. She was disappointed, but she tried not to take it personally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He really felt overwhelmed and he got to a point where he felt really afraid of not turning something in, and so he turned something in,” Bond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>T redid the assignment from scratch with help from Bond.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says he now has this advice for students who may be tempted to use AI to do their schoolwork for them: “Take a second and think about it. Would you rather really grow from an experience of actually doing some work and critically thinking about the things you’re writing or talking about, or just taking nothing away from it and just use a robot?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How others are embracing the technology\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Not every teacher agrees with Bond’s approach – including her friend, Brett Vogelsinger, who teaches English at Central Bucks High School South outside Philadelphia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says he tries to model responsible AI use to his students, showing them the difference between using the technology to cheat and using it to advance their learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vogelsinger says he wants his students to be able “to determine that this particular use is shortcutting and shortchanging my thinking and this use is pushing me and actually making me think more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And he allows AI use on some assignments — so long as students are transparent about \u003cem>how\u003c/em> they used it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even Vogelsinger, who wrote a book about using AI in writing instruction, says he’s still figuring out how and when to incorporate AI into teaching: “We’re very much in the experimental phase of all this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And while Bond and many of her students see the value of an AI-free classroom, the federal government, some states and some school districts are embracing the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miami-Dade County Public Schools, one of the country’s largest districts, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wlrn.org/education/2025-05-19/miami-schools-ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gives high schoolers access to Google’s Gemini chatbot\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The future is now,” said Miami-Dade Superintendent Jose Dotres, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz8GI5piLT4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in a video\u003c/a> published on the Google for Education YouTube account. “We have to embrace the fact that AI is becoming an important tool for not only learning, but teaching.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Jersey set aside \u003ca href=\"https://www.nj.gov/education/news/2025/NewJerseyDepartmentofEducationAnnouncesGrantAwardstoSupportArtificialIntelligenceInnovationinEducation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">over a million dollars in grants\u003c/a> last year to advance classroom AI use. The governor at the time, Phil Murphy, said it was an effort to invest in “the next generation of tech leaders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And last spring, the Trump administration issued an executive order to expand AI education in K-12 schools through public-private partnerships and grants for AI teacher training. Guidance from the U.S. Department of Education also supports “responsible adoption of AI” in schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1600x1066+0+0/resize/1200/quality/75/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8e%2F1b%2F375713144fa09bb8195ad5c1ff92%2Fai-ban5.jpg\" alt=\"Chanea Bond disagrees with the argument that not incorporating AI into lessons puts her students at risk of falling behind. 'I just don't see a world where students learning how to think and learning how to articulate themselves puts them at a disadvantage,' she says.\">\u003cfigcaption>Chanea Bond disagrees with the argument that not incorporating AI into lessons puts her students at risk of falling behind. “I just don’t see a world where students learning how to think and learning how to articulate themselves puts them at a disadvantage,” she says. \u003ccite> (Nitashia Johnson for NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Bond says she’s open to changing her mind, but right now she doesn’t see much value in AI for her students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s less harmful to me to make sure that they can do the things without the AI than to try and push the AI into my classroom knowing that, at least for some of them, it’s going to mean that they don’t get to acquire the skills that they need,” Bond says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This reporting was supported by a grant from the\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tarbellcenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem> Tarbell Center for AI Journalism\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and the Omidyar Network’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://omidyar.com/update/omidyar-network-announces-2026-class-of-reporters-in-residence/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Reporters in Residence program\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>The risks of using \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65296/with-ai-changing-everything-heres-how-teachers-can-shape-the-new-culture-of-learning\">generative artificial intelligence\u003c/a> to educate children and teens currently overshadow the benefits, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sweeping study includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators and tech experts in 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. It found that using AI in education can “undermine children’s foundational development” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting,” though “fixable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because generative AI is still young — ChatGPT was released \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just over three years ago\u003c/a> — the report’s authors dubbed their review a “premortem” intended to study AI’s potential in the classroom without a postmortem’s benefits of time, long-term data or hindsight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the pros and cons that the report lays out, along with a sampling of the study’s recommendations for teachers, parents, school leaders and government officials:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can help students learn to read and write\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Teachers surveyed for the report said AI can be useful when it comes to language acquisition, especially for students learning a second language. For example, AI can adjust the complexity of a passage depending on the reader’s skill, and it offers privacy for students who struggle in large-group settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers reported that AI can also help improve students’ writing, so long as it is used to support students’ efforts and not to do the work for them: “Teachers report that AI can ‘spark creativity’ and help students overcome writer’s block. … At the drafting stage, it can help with organization, coherence, syntax, semantics, and grammar. At the revision stage, AI can support the editing and rewriting of ideas as well as help with … punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, if there is a refrain in the report, it is this: AI is most useful when it’s supplementing, not replacing, the efforts of a flesh-and-blood teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses a grave threat to students’ cognitive development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at Brookings, warns, “When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cognitive off-loading isn’t new. The report points out that keyboards and computers reduced the need for handwriting, and calculators automated basic math. But AI has “turbocharged” this kind of off-loading, especially in schools where learning can feel transactional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one student told the researchers, “It’s easy. You don’t need to (use) your brain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report offers a surfeit of evidence to suggest that students who use generative AI are already seeing declines in content knowledge, critical thinking and even creativity. And this could have enormous consequences if these young people grow into adults without learning to think critically.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can make teachers’ jobs a little easier\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The report says another benefit of AI is that it allows teachers to automate some tasks: “generating parent emails … translating materials, creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans” — and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report cites multiple research studies that found important time-saving benefits for teachers, including one U.S. study that found that teachers who use AI save an average of nearly six hours a week and about six weeks over the course of a full school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro/Con: AI can be an engine of equity — or inequity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the strongest arguments in favor of AI’s educational use, according to the Brookings report, is its ability to reach children who have been excluded from the classroom. The researchers cite Afghanistan, where girls and women have been denied access to formal, postprimary education by the Taliban.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sola-afghanistan.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one program for Afghan girls\u003c/a> “has employed AI to digitize the Afghan curriculum, create lessons based on this curriculum, and disseminate content in Dari, Pashto, and English via WhatsApp lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI can also help make classrooms more accessible for students with a wide range of learning disabilities, including dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “AI can massively increase existing divides” too, Winthrop warns. That’s because the free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools can also be the least reliable and least factually accurate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that richer communities and schools will be able to afford more advanced AI models,” Winthrop says, “and we know those more advanced AI models are more accurate. Which means that this is the first time in ed-tech history that schools will have to pay more for more accurate information. And that really hurts schools without a lot of resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses serious threats to social and emotional development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Survey responses revealed deep concern that use of AI, particularly chatbots, “is undermining students’ emotional well-being, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks, and maintain mental health,” the report says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many problems with kids’ overuse of AI is that the technology is inherently sycophantic — it has been designed to reinforce users’ beliefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop says that if children are building social-emotional skills largely through interactions with chatbots that were designed to agree with them, “it becomes very uncomfortable to then be in an environment when somebody doesn’t agree with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop offers an example of a child interacting with a chatbot, “complaining about your parents and saying, ‘They want me to wash the dishes — this is so annoying. I hate my parents.’ The chatbot will likely say, ‘You’re right. You’re misunderstood. I’m so sorry. I understand you.’ Versus a friend who would say, ‘Dude, I wash the dishes all the time in my house. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. That’s normal.’ That right there is the problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5561981/ai-students-schools-teachers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent survey\u003c/a> from the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age, found that nearly 1 in 5 high schoolers said they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with artificial intelligence. And 42% of students in that survey said they or someone they know has used AI for companionship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report warns that AI’s echo chamber can stunt a child’s emotional growth: “We learn empathy not when we are perfectly understood, but when we misunderstand and recover,” one of the surveyed experts said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What to do about it\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Brookings report offers a long list of recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers — not to mention tech companies themselves — harness the good of AI without subjecting children to the risks that the technology currently poses. Among those recommendations:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"rte2-style-ul\">\n\u003cli>Schooling itself could be less focused on what the report calls “transactional task completion” or a grade-based endgame and more focused on fostering curiosity and a desire to learn. Students will be less inclined to ask AI to do the work for them if they feel engaged by that work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>AI designed for use by children and teens should be less sycophantic and more “antagonistic,” pushing back against preconceived notions and challenging users to reflect and evaluate.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Tech companies could collaborate with educators in “co-design hubs.” In the Netherlands, a government-backed hub already brings together tech companies and educators to develop, test and evaluate new AI applications in the classroom.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Holistic AI literacy is crucial — both for teachers and students. Some countries, including China and Estonia, have comprehensive, national AI literacy guidelines.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>As schools continue to embrace AI, it’s important that underfunded districts in marginalized communities are not left behind, allowing AI to further drive inequity.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Governments have a responsibility to regulate the use of AI in schools, making sure that the technology being used protects students’ cognitive and emotional health, as well as their privacy. In the U.S., the Trump administration has \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tried to prohibit\u003c/a> states from regulating AI on their own, even as Congress has so far failed to create a federal regulatory framework.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With this “premortem,” the authors argue, the time to act is now. AI’s risks to children and teens are already abundant and obvious. The good news is: so are many of the remedies.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The risks of using \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/65296/with-ai-changing-everything-heres-how-teachers-can-shape-the-new-culture-of-learning\">generative artificial intelligence\u003c/a> to educate children and teens currently overshadow the benefits, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sweeping study includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators and tech experts in 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. It found that using AI in education can “undermine children’s foundational development” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting,” though “fixable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed npr-promo-card insettwocolumn\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because generative AI is still young — ChatGPT was released \u003ca href=\"https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just over three years ago\u003c/a> — the report’s authors dubbed their review a “premortem” intended to study AI’s potential in the classroom without a postmortem’s benefits of time, long-term data or hindsight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are some of the pros and cons that the report lays out, along with a sampling of the study’s recommendations for teachers, parents, school leaders and government officials:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can help students learn to read and write\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Teachers surveyed for the report said AI can be useful when it comes to language acquisition, especially for students learning a second language. For example, AI can adjust the complexity of a passage depending on the reader’s skill, and it offers privacy for students who struggle in large-group settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Teachers reported that AI can also help improve students’ writing, so long as it is used to support students’ efforts and not to do the work for them: “Teachers report that AI can ‘spark creativity’ and help students overcome writer’s block. … At the drafting stage, it can help with organization, coherence, syntax, semantics, and grammar. At the revision stage, AI can support the editing and rewriting of ideas as well as help with … punctuation, capitalization, and grammar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, if there is a refrain in the report, it is this: AI is most useful when it’s supplementing, not replacing, the efforts of a flesh-and-blood teacher.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses a grave threat to students’ cognitive development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rebecca Winthrop, one of the report’s authors and a senior fellow at Brookings, warns, “When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.\u003cem>“\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cognitive off-loading isn’t new. The report points out that keyboards and computers reduced the need for handwriting, and calculators automated basic math. But AI has “turbocharged” this kind of off-loading, especially in schools where learning can feel transactional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one student told the researchers, “It’s easy. You don’t need to (use) your brain.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report offers a surfeit of evidence to suggest that students who use generative AI are already seeing declines in content knowledge, critical thinking and even creativity. And this could have enormous consequences if these young people grow into adults without learning to think critically.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro: AI can make teachers’ jobs a little easier\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The report says another benefit of AI is that it allows teachers to automate some tasks: “generating parent emails … translating materials, creating worksheets, rubrics, quizzes, and lesson plans” — and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report cites multiple research studies that found important time-saving benefits for teachers, including one U.S. study that found that teachers who use AI save an average of nearly six hours a week and about six weeks over the course of a full school year.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Pro/Con: AI can be an engine of equity — or inequity\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>One of the strongest arguments in favor of AI’s educational use, according to the Brookings report, is its ability to reach children who have been excluded from the classroom. The researchers cite Afghanistan, where girls and women have been denied access to formal, postprimary education by the Taliban.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the report, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sola-afghanistan.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one program for Afghan girls\u003c/a> “has employed AI to digitize the Afghan curriculum, create lessons based on this curriculum, and disseminate content in Dari, Pashto, and English via WhatsApp lessons.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>AI can also help make classrooms more accessible for students with a wide range of learning disabilities, including dyslexia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “AI can massively increase existing divides” too, Winthrop warns. That’s because the free AI tools that are most accessible to students and schools can also be the least reliable and least factually accurate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We know that richer communities and schools will be able to afford more advanced AI models,” Winthrop says, “and we know those more advanced AI models are more accurate. Which means that this is the first time in ed-tech history that schools will have to pay more for more accurate information. And that really hurts schools without a lot of resources.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Con: AI poses serious threats to social and emotional development\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Survey responses revealed deep concern that use of AI, particularly chatbots, “is undermining students’ emotional well-being, including their ability to form relationships, recover from setbacks, and maintain mental health,” the report says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the many problems with kids’ overuse of AI is that the technology is inherently sycophantic — it has been designed to reinforce users’ beliefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop says that if children are building social-emotional skills largely through interactions with chatbots that were designed to agree with them, “it becomes very uncomfortable to then be in an environment when somebody doesn’t agree with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winthrop offers an example of a child interacting with a chatbot, “complaining about your parents and saying, ‘They want me to wash the dishes — this is so annoying. I hate my parents.’ The chatbot will likely say, ‘You’re right. You’re misunderstood. I’m so sorry. I understand you.’ Versus a friend who would say, ‘Dude, I wash the dishes all the time in my house. I don’t know what you’re complaining about. That’s normal.’ That right there is the problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/nx-s1-5561981/ai-students-schools-teachers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent survey\u003c/a> from the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age, found that nearly 1 in 5 high schoolers said they or someone they know has had a romantic relationship with artificial intelligence. And 42% of students in that survey said they or someone they know has used AI for companionship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report warns that AI’s echo chamber can stunt a child’s emotional growth: “We learn empathy not when we are perfectly understood, but when we misunderstand and recover,” one of the surveyed experts said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What to do about it\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The Brookings report offers a long list of recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers — not to mention tech companies themselves — harness the good of AI without subjecting children to the risks that the technology currently poses. Among those recommendations:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul class=\"rte2-style-ul\">\n\u003cli>Schooling itself could be less focused on what the report calls “transactional task completion” or a grade-based endgame and more focused on fostering curiosity and a desire to learn. Students will be less inclined to ask AI to do the work for them if they feel engaged by that work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>AI designed for use by children and teens should be less sycophantic and more “antagonistic,” pushing back against preconceived notions and challenging users to reflect and evaluate.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Tech companies could collaborate with educators in “co-design hubs.” In the Netherlands, a government-backed hub already brings together tech companies and educators to develop, test and evaluate new AI applications in the classroom.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Holistic AI literacy is crucial — both for teachers and students. Some countries, including China and Estonia, have comprehensive, national AI literacy guidelines.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>As schools continue to embrace AI, it’s important that underfunded districts in marginalized communities are not left behind, allowing AI to further drive inequity.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Governments have a responsibility to regulate the use of AI in schools, making sure that the technology being used protects students’ cognitive and emotional health, as well as their privacy. In the U.S., the Trump administration has \u003ca href=\"https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tried to prohibit\u003c/a> states from regulating AI on their own, even as Congress has so far failed to create a federal regulatory framework.\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"order": 16
},
"link": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
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