Educators need to reassess the objective for students to learn in each class, and then design the participation to accomplish that in an AI world. For example, if the objective is to be able to write a essay, they should have them write by hand in class. This is the way things were done just a few decades ago, we should be flexible in reevaluating the best method in this new world
I agree. Anything assigned as take-home will just be offloaded to AI. Maybe we could take a page from some successful countries' book and do more work in school while leaving afterschool as a more open time for kids to explore their interests and hobbies (assuming they don't fill it with screentime)
I forgot that the Trump sledge hammer also dismantled the department of education. What a train wreck.
I am on a committee regarding AI use and cheating in our school. It looks quite different and has different solutions in different subjects.
Generally, the solution is live assessment, oracy, but it takes time. Pencil to paper works, socratic discussion works. Providing frames and heuristics and applying to real world examples works. The only drawback is coverage. Less coverage of standards because assessment without paper writing takes a long time.
AI isn't helping young people cheat. It's forcing adults to finally ask the real questions: what's actually worth learning, and how do we make that learning mean something.
School was outdated and broken long before AI showed up. So the knee-jerk reaction, that we just need to keep kids from "cheating," misses the entire point.
I've got at least 10,000 words on this. It's complicated. But start here:
Think about the last time you really learned something. What was the motivation? How did you do it? Seriously, pause and sit with it. My guess is it wasn't for a grade.
Yes, 100%. Grades were an imperfect convenience to assess competence and lesson plans were the failure of a teacher to adapt to an individual student. AI solves both problems.
The undetectable/detectable debate of AI is a red herring, the underlying issue is that we, for much longer than AI has been around, have few tools or methods to verify who wrote or did something. You could cognitively surrender work to your friend, mom, sister, or a paid proxy long before you could to a chat or.
While i agree with the some of commentary and understand the data set examples, it is a real stretch to blame AI's evolution for the defeciencies in math, science , reading and critical thinking and problem solving. (National Assessment of Education Progress , ( 2025). The US instructional designs used in public and private education has not helped either. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are just as residentally deficient across generations.
In this age of the new knowledge economy, we should resist the temptation of being too aggresive and provacative about the perils of AI, rather it may be more productive to work collectively to reform teaching preparation, adapt to the current audience of both student and adult learners by using more innovative learning models such as expanding the use of self-directed and experiential learning integration both in the classrooms and outside the classroom. In American education..... from K-12 to all forms of learning design, its time to reform and change the lens we are using which got its start in the one room school house in the 1800's. Let's spend more time on learning about this emerging technology ensuring AI is the tool it can become not the boggey man.
The first two graphs depict reading and math scores plummeting since 2020, long before AI. It’s much more plausible that remote learning after the Covid pandemic is the real culprit.
When I was at school, my Dad used to do my art homework for me - not to encourage me to cheat, but to encourage me to maximise my time on the subjects I really cared about.
There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing some tasks or some aspects of a task. But there are limits. Or there ought to be!
In 1997, I took a class called “intro to critical thinking” as a freshman at Bowling Green State University. I was among the top students in my high school class, but I did not show up to college with a fully developed set of critical thinking skills. These skills were introduced to me by Prof. M Neil Browne, who I remember as being a real asshole, but a very effective teacher. His class and the book he wrote, Asking the Right Questions, a guide to Critical Thinking, greatly enhanced my mental analysis abilities during a very formative time in my life.
I hope that schools still offer a course in Critical Thinking, and it’s our responsibility, as the generation who remembers an analog life, to pass on our knowledge to the younger people around us.
OK so our experience is not in the USA but - My daughter's public high school (1500+ students) in a major city required all cellphones to be placed in a box by the door during classes. The Grade 11 and Grade 12 classes taught the kids how to structure and write essays of gradually increasing length, and how to read long texts and capture the key points, and stand up and present their homework. It is very embarrassing for students to stand up and read out their AI-generated homework to the class.
This was in a high school where 70% of the entering Grade 9 students spoke English as a second language. And pretty much all of the graduating class got accepted into college if they applied.
My daughter was a freshman at a world-class research university here last year. She endured a syllabus of over 20 novels and textbooks for her first year, long written exams, and multiple 10+ page essays. She completed it all, as did most of her classmates. That amount of work was difficult and stressful, but she made it through. How do you teach young adults to overcome challenges if you don't provide them any challenges to overcome?
I believe teaching quality and life skills training has to be a priority at the elementary/high school division level, it is too easy for school administrators and teachers to have very modest learning requirements come down from federal or state administrations and just do that basic minimum.
Well stated (as are the points in the article). Education is a multi-sided ecosystem, each with its own set of responsibilities. That said, adults have to lead.
One of the things I learned coaching youth sports was that when it came to subpar behavior or performance, it ultimately came down to either coaching it or allowing it. The baseline is kids will be kids.
Then there is the time honored principle of leading by example. As a parent, I remember being struck by how little engagement teachers seemingly had with my kids work. If I felt that a step removed, imagine what kids experience. If an essay is not considered worth the effort to read by the teacher, should we expect it to be written by the student?
The funding data on this is striking too, since the best-funded category in AI-education VC by far is habit-forming practice apps in the Duolingo mold (streaks, instant answers, repetition). Meanwhile tools that actually verify whether real learning happened are comparatively starved of investment, described by one research firm as underfunded relative to its classroom importance. Feels like the market is structurally rewarding exactly the "give the answer, skip the struggle" pattern you're describing, mainly because engagement metrics are easier to sell to investors than proof of actual learning. Here is the RichStorm article to read more: https://www.richstorm.co/post/ai-in-education-where-things-actually-stand-in-2026
Technically, the Covid period was a time when cheating was even easier than today. Even if it were a live test we could have Google open right in front of us. I think AI is pretty much comparable to the Covid period.
Wow. Excellent piece. I think many schools pride themselves in being “tech forward” and “innovative,” so they throw AI/iPads/Chromebooks into the classroom, but this is literally worst-case scenario. All that does is digitize a broken model. We’re truly at an inflection point where we need to reimagine the model itself. And I 100% agree that with AI tutors, there is tremendous hope.
I think the idea of “alternative” schooling freaks people out, but everything about our world is changing, and school needs to be the place that prepares our kids for the real world. (Otherwise, what’s the point of school?) Thank you for writing.
You hit on a critical point about how commercial AI tools encourage cognitive offloading. However, the fact that a generic tool can so easily pass our school exams or write these essays doesn't just expose the flaws of tech—it exposes that our school systems have been rewarding the mere reproduction of knowledge for far too long.
Learning is inherently a messy, slow process that requires deep cognitive friction, which commercial shortcuts easily wipe out. But since AI is already here and blanket bans are rarely effective, the real work lies in how we respond. Beyond changing what we test, our best path forward might be moving away from these generic platforms and focusing on intentional 'Educational AI'—technology specifically designed to prompt deep, critical reasoning and sharpen human agency, rather than replacing it.
Educators need to reassess the objective for students to learn in each class, and then design the participation to accomplish that in an AI world. For example, if the objective is to be able to write a essay, they should have them write by hand in class. This is the way things were done just a few decades ago, we should be flexible in reevaluating the best method in this new world
I agree. Anything assigned as take-home will just be offloaded to AI. Maybe we could take a page from some successful countries' book and do more work in school while leaving afterschool as a more open time for kids to explore their interests and hobbies (assuming they don't fill it with screentime)
I forgot that the Trump sledge hammer also dismantled the department of education. What a train wreck.
I am on a committee regarding AI use and cheating in our school. It looks quite different and has different solutions in different subjects.
Generally, the solution is live assessment, oracy, but it takes time. Pencil to paper works, socratic discussion works. Providing frames and heuristics and applying to real world examples works. The only drawback is coverage. Less coverage of standards because assessment without paper writing takes a long time.
AI isn't helping young people cheat. It's forcing adults to finally ask the real questions: what's actually worth learning, and how do we make that learning mean something.
School was outdated and broken long before AI showed up. So the knee-jerk reaction, that we just need to keep kids from "cheating," misses the entire point.
I've got at least 10,000 words on this. It's complicated. But start here:
Think about the last time you really learned something. What was the motivation? How did you do it? Seriously, pause and sit with it. My guess is it wasn't for a grade.
Yes, 100%. Grades were an imperfect convenience to assess competence and lesson plans were the failure of a teacher to adapt to an individual student. AI solves both problems.
Big tech and the 0.00I% class forced ai on society for a specific reason.
The undetectable/detectable debate of AI is a red herring, the underlying issue is that we, for much longer than AI has been around, have few tools or methods to verify who wrote or did something. You could cognitively surrender work to your friend, mom, sister, or a paid proxy long before you could to a chat or.
While i agree with the some of commentary and understand the data set examples, it is a real stretch to blame AI's evolution for the defeciencies in math, science , reading and critical thinking and problem solving. (National Assessment of Education Progress , ( 2025). The US instructional designs used in public and private education has not helped either. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are just as residentally deficient across generations.
In this age of the new knowledge economy, we should resist the temptation of being too aggresive and provacative about the perils of AI, rather it may be more productive to work collectively to reform teaching preparation, adapt to the current audience of both student and adult learners by using more innovative learning models such as expanding the use of self-directed and experiential learning integration both in the classrooms and outside the classroom. In American education..... from K-12 to all forms of learning design, its time to reform and change the lens we are using which got its start in the one room school house in the 1800's. Let's spend more time on learning about this emerging technology ensuring AI is the tool it can become not the boggey man.
The first two graphs depict reading and math scores plummeting since 2020, long before AI. It’s much more plausible that remote learning after the Covid pandemic is the real culprit.
When I was at school, my Dad used to do my art homework for me - not to encourage me to cheat, but to encourage me to maximise my time on the subjects I really cared about.
There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing some tasks or some aspects of a task. But there are limits. Or there ought to be!
In 1997, I took a class called “intro to critical thinking” as a freshman at Bowling Green State University. I was among the top students in my high school class, but I did not show up to college with a fully developed set of critical thinking skills. These skills were introduced to me by Prof. M Neil Browne, who I remember as being a real asshole, but a very effective teacher. His class and the book he wrote, Asking the Right Questions, a guide to Critical Thinking, greatly enhanced my mental analysis abilities during a very formative time in my life.
I hope that schools still offer a course in Critical Thinking, and it’s our responsibility, as the generation who remembers an analog life, to pass on our knowledge to the younger people around us.
OK so our experience is not in the USA but - My daughter's public high school (1500+ students) in a major city required all cellphones to be placed in a box by the door during classes. The Grade 11 and Grade 12 classes taught the kids how to structure and write essays of gradually increasing length, and how to read long texts and capture the key points, and stand up and present their homework. It is very embarrassing for students to stand up and read out their AI-generated homework to the class.
This was in a high school where 70% of the entering Grade 9 students spoke English as a second language. And pretty much all of the graduating class got accepted into college if they applied.
My daughter was a freshman at a world-class research university here last year. She endured a syllabus of over 20 novels and textbooks for her first year, long written exams, and multiple 10+ page essays. She completed it all, as did most of her classmates. That amount of work was difficult and stressful, but she made it through. How do you teach young adults to overcome challenges if you don't provide them any challenges to overcome?
I believe teaching quality and life skills training has to be a priority at the elementary/high school division level, it is too easy for school administrators and teachers to have very modest learning requirements come down from federal or state administrations and just do that basic minimum.
Well stated (as are the points in the article). Education is a multi-sided ecosystem, each with its own set of responsibilities. That said, adults have to lead.
One of the things I learned coaching youth sports was that when it came to subpar behavior or performance, it ultimately came down to either coaching it or allowing it. The baseline is kids will be kids.
Then there is the time honored principle of leading by example. As a parent, I remember being struck by how little engagement teachers seemingly had with my kids work. If I felt that a step removed, imagine what kids experience. If an essay is not considered worth the effort to read by the teacher, should we expect it to be written by the student?
"If an essay is not considered worth the effort to read by the teacher, should we expect it to be written by the student?" Spot on, coach!
Thanks, Mia, lots of good data from an ongoing study that is being led by a nonprofit called Ed3global. Report N-size is 1100+
The funding data on this is striking too, since the best-funded category in AI-education VC by far is habit-forming practice apps in the Duolingo mold (streaks, instant answers, repetition). Meanwhile tools that actually verify whether real learning happened are comparatively starved of investment, described by one research firm as underfunded relative to its classroom importance. Feels like the market is structurally rewarding exactly the "give the answer, skip the struggle" pattern you're describing, mainly because engagement metrics are easier to sell to investors than proof of actual learning. Here is the RichStorm article to read more: https://www.richstorm.co/post/ai-in-education-where-things-actually-stand-in-2026
Technically, the Covid period was a time when cheating was even easier than today. Even if it were a live test we could have Google open right in front of us. I think AI is pretty much comparable to the Covid period.
Wow. Excellent piece. I think many schools pride themselves in being “tech forward” and “innovative,” so they throw AI/iPads/Chromebooks into the classroom, but this is literally worst-case scenario. All that does is digitize a broken model. We’re truly at an inflection point where we need to reimagine the model itself. And I 100% agree that with AI tutors, there is tremendous hope.
I think the idea of “alternative” schooling freaks people out, but everything about our world is changing, and school needs to be the place that prepares our kids for the real world. (Otherwise, what’s the point of school?) Thank you for writing.
You hit on a critical point about how commercial AI tools encourage cognitive offloading. However, the fact that a generic tool can so easily pass our school exams or write these essays doesn't just expose the flaws of tech—it exposes that our school systems have been rewarding the mere reproduction of knowledge for far too long.
Learning is inherently a messy, slow process that requires deep cognitive friction, which commercial shortcuts easily wipe out. But since AI is already here and blanket bans are rarely effective, the real work lies in how we respond. Beyond changing what we test, our best path forward might be moving away from these generic platforms and focusing on intentional 'Educational AI'—technology specifically designed to prompt deep, critical reasoning and sharpen human agency, rather than replacing it.
Does this surprise anyone?