AI for Education

It's great to see our work with Charleston County School District getting positive news coverage!

Everywhere we go, we hear the same story: a student accused of cheating because an AI detector flagged their work. One of our school partners even shared that an AI detection vendor's sales pitch amounted to: better to use ours, because your teachers will just find another one anyway. The thing is, AI detectors aren't reliable enough to trust. They produce false positives, miss AI-generated work, and disproportionately affect multilingual and neurodivergent students. At the same time, we know that students are using AI in academically dishonest ways and educators still need practical ways to respond when they have concerns about inappropriate AI use. This is why we created AI for Education's new resource that summarizes the current evidence on AI detectors and offers practical guidance for educators and school leaders. The resource explores: ✅ What the current evidence says about AI detectors ✅ The limitations and risks of relying on detector scores ✅ Practical steps to take when you suspect inappropriate AI use ✅ Proactive strategies that strengthen assessment and AI literacy Whether you're developing school policy, supporting teachers, or navigating questions or concerns about AI detection, this guide is designed to help you make informed decisions grounded in research, professional judgment, and fair process. Link in the comments to download the resource or dig into the research further. Special thanks to Dr. Vic Chamness from Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation for collaborating with us to create the resource. #AILiteracy #K12

Since 2023, in every keynote and flagship presentation on Generative AI, I have shared with educators that we are living in an inflection point akin to the Industrial Revolution. That single comparison does more to shift mindsets than anything else I share. Teachers stop asking whether this matters and start thinking through what needs to change. The Industrial Revolution changed everything from how we work, to where we live, and how we go to school. But it took 70-100 years for those changes to take effect. Today more than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of both OpenAI and Anthropic, released a joint statement saying AI could become radically more powerful over the next ten years and drive an economic transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution, unfolding over a far shorter time frame. The statement calls on economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to prepare. Educators are not named even though most signers are at universities. You cannot prepare a society for this level of disruption and leave out the people who educate it. If we want to have the best chance of meeting this moment, educators must be at the table. AI for Education

In our workshops, we keep seeing the same thing: when students recieve good AI literacy training means more critical use of the tools. GenAI is designed to feel effortless. You ask a question and get a fluent, confident answer in seconds. That ease is the trap. Good GenAI use takes real oversight, and most students are operating in the dark. A new study out of France (Clerc et al., 2026) shows what changes when you teach that oversight. The researchers gave 116 middle schoolers a set of science tasks to work through with a GenAI tool. Beforehand, 76 students attended a two-hour AI literacy workshop; the other 40 did not. The workshop wasn't just some prompting pointers. It covered how LLMs work and why they fail (hallucinations, bias, sycophancy) along with a few transferable practices like adding more context to prompts and asking follow-up questions. The results showed that trained students: 🔹 Were more likely to reject weak, underspecified prompts. 🔹 Asked follow-up questions to get better responses more often (59% vs. 28%). 🔹 More accurately judged whether GenAI responses were correct. One other takeaway the evidence keeps surfacing: how confident students felt about AI didn't predict how well they used it. While this is a small study with modest gains, it is an initial proof point that short GenAI literacy training can teach students better, more critical use of the tools. You can check out the study in the comments. AI for Education #AIliteracy #K12

I was asked by the 74million to review a new Stanford study that followed ~350 elementary students across two districts who were given access to an AI reading tutor. Here is what they found. Left to use it on their own, most students barely touched it with nearly half never logging on at all. Across all of the students, weekly use averaged just 2-5 minutes, far below the 30 minutes the developers of the tool say kids need before they see any benefit. Pairing students with a human tutor for check-ins and encouragement had a very small impact. Usage went up by 1-4 minutes a week. In both cases, the AI tutor didn't improve their reading scores, which tells us very little, since the tool barely got used in the first place. None of this surprised us as we've seen the pattern before. Sal Khan, one of the earliest champions of AI tutoring, has admitted that Khanmigo was "a non-event" for many students who simply didn't use it. While it's always good to have new research into the impact of AI EdTech tools, I'm not sure this one is even asking the right question. The question we should be grappling with shouldn't be how to get young kids to use an AI reading tutor more often. Measuring usage was the easy part. The better question is whether these tools belong in early elementary classrooms at all. Study and articles linked in the comments. AI for Education #GenAI #aisafety #K12 #teachingwithAI

A new report on 9-17 year olds' use of AI by Common Sense Media puts a spotlight on the widening gap between AI usage and AI literacy. While 85% of students who use AI turn to it for schoolwork, a large majority lack even the most basic knowledge of how AI works. The report found that out of the respondents who said they know "a lot" about how AI works, only 37% knew that GenAI can't tell the difference between what's true and what's false. Perhaps most concerning is the finding that students who struggle academically, including those who have a hard time staying focused, lean on AI the most: 56% compared with 46% of their peers. These students are turning to AI for help, but without AI literacy, their use runs the risk of exposing them to misinformation, overreliance, and cognitive offloading. Schools have a critical role to play. Policies and guidelines are a start, but there is a danger in only communicating to students what not to do. Effective AI literacy teaches students how to make informed decisions not only about how to use GenAI, but also about when they should set the tools aside. Our SEE GenAI Literacy Framework lays out the importance of AI literacy instruction that counters misconceptions, builds foundational knowledge of how the tools work, and cultivates critical mindsets. This is how students move from confident but uncritical AI use to true self-efficacy, where their use is grounded in safe, ethical, and effective practices. Link to the full report in the comments. AI for Education #GenAI #AILiteracy

When a new technology moves faster than the rules meant to govern it, lawsuits and legislation lag behind the crises that schools, young people, and parents are managing in real time. Florida just became the first U.S. state to sue OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, accusing the company of pursuing profit over user safety, harvesting minors' data without parental oversight, and causing real-world violence and harm. The 83-page complaint is worth a read. This kind of pushback is necessary. These are not abstract harms. Children are using these tools right now, in many cases without guardrails, and the companies building them have moved fast without being meaningfully held to account. Right now, it's kids, families, and schools absorbing that risk while companies collect the data and the revenue. Our best opportunity for big tech to build GenAI that prioritizes safety along with profits is to keep demanding accountability, not just better PR and half-measures. Links to the lawsuit and the Variety article in the comments. #AIforEducation #GenAI #aisafety #K12

We partnered with CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) to create a free new resource that connects CAST's Universal Design for Learning guidelines to AI for Education’s SEE Framework mindsets. It gives educators guidance for ensuring GenAI supports every student with more intentional, equitable, and effective learning experiences. The resource pairs each UDL guideline with a SEE mindset, then offers specific classroom strategies for putting that connection to work. A few ways to put it to use: ✅ Share it with your team as a discussion starter for how GenAI fits into your existing instructional design. ✅ Use it as a planning tool when designing assignments that involve GenAI tools. ✅ Apply it when evaluating a new GenAI tool or revisiting one already in use The resource was featured in our recent webinar with CAST, "More Than Personalization - How to Build AI Experiences That Empower Students." The session focused on what it would actually take for GenAI tools to deliver on the promise of UDL, including: 🔹 What learner agency really means 🔹 Why most tools are only scratching the surface of UDL best practices 🔹 What educators can do now even when the tools fall short. A huge thank you to CAST CEO Lindsay Jones and Michelle Soriano, Ed.M., CPACC for their partnership in developing this resource and bringing this conversation to life in the webinar. The complete PDF and Word versions of the resource are linked in the comments, along with the webinar recording. #UDL #AILiteracy #K12

I'm excited to share that AI for Education has partnered with Lightspeed Systems for a series of in-person sessions designed to help K12 district leaders gain real visibility into how GenAI is being used in their schools and how to mitigate harms associated with high risk tools. We're bringing together district technology, curriculum, safety, and school leaders for working sessions in Phoenix (5/28) San Diego (6/3), San Francisco (6/5), and Portland (6/10) over the next few weeks. The best part of these events is that we have designed a brand new workshop and a GenAI Tool Audit resource that is designed to be easily implemented at the district or school level. We've already had three successful events, so if you're a district leader in one of the upcoming regions and have the time, I'd love for you to join! You can register at the link below. #ailiteracy #K12