Teachers see AI evolving from nuisance to necessity at K-12 schools

By Sean Salai – The Washington Times – Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Samantha Gleisten has made her share of mistakes teaching generative artificial intelligence to middle school students in Chicago.

When she first invited a group of eighth graders to create chatbots with a software program two years ago, one trained his AI to be a narcissist who gave antagonistic “I’m better than you” responses. Another created an AI Snoop Dogg who veered into inappropriate drug references in improvised rap lyrics.

She soon learned how to be quicker at reining students in — and choosier about selecting AI software with guardrails for children that she could tailor to the classroom.

“I wanted to show my students how to engage a new technology, but I didn’t stop to think what was appropriate,” said Ms. Gleisten, who directs education technology at Rogers Park Montessori School and co-founded the company AI Education last year. “Fortunately, it didn’t get scary, and now I know how to check the privacy policies and vet the tools I’m using.”

She’s one of thousands of K-12 teachers who have worked to transform AI chatbots from a nuisance into a necessity since ChatGPT took campuses by storm in late 2022.

Education insiders interviewed by The Washington Times said the evolution of AI in schools has unfolded in three stages: banning generative AI to prevent cheating, developing AI usage policies and requiring “strategic integration” of AI literacy instruction.

“Initially, there was panic, fear about cheating, misinformation, loss of jobs, but the conversation has matured,” said Gadi Kovler, CEO of Radius, an AI platform for teachers. “Students don’t need to study AI as a concept as much as they need to be flexible, critical thinkers who can adapt to rapidly evolving tools and workflows.”

Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT allow users who pose written or verbal questions to create new text, images and music from an ever-expanding database.

Most teachers initially resisted AI as a threat to traditional learning, then gradually embraced it.

Turnitin — a website teachers use to detect plagiarism in assignments — released an AI-detection tool in April 2023 that claimed to be 97% effective at flagging computer-generated writing in essays.

As more schools adopted AI for learning feedback, tutoring and group projects, Turnitin.com pivoted this year.

In March, the company announced the launch of Turnitin Clarity, a “composition workspace” to help students “draft writing assignments with transparency” and receive AI-generated feedback to improve their work.

The new program’s AI writing assistant uses a teacher’s assignment instructions to guide students in writing and editing a submission over multiple sessions. It includes a video playback feature that lets teachers review a student’s entire drafting process, including copied-and-pasted text and typing patterns.

“AI-generated writing is not a binary concept with rigid lines around what is or is not acceptable,” said Annie Chechitelli, Turnitin’s chief product officer. “Instead, this technology is a true disruption, requiring us to rethink many aspects of our world.”

While interactive chatbots can pass multiple-choice exams and create deepfake recordings of people’s voices, administrators stress the need to form thoughtful human users to produce deeper insights.

“AI apps allow learners to write, speak, perform and construct a lesson or problem from any location,” said Michael Liebmann, an assistant superintendent at the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District in New Jersey. “They cannot replace the relationships that are created between the teacher and the children in the room.”

Beyond essays, generative AI has helped students understand difficult math questions.

The homework-learning app Brainly launched “Ginny” — a ChatGPT-powered chatbot that helps students expand or simplify answers to complex math and science problems as a learning aid — in March 2023.

For example, Ginny can analyze a student’s answer to a difficult Calculus homework or study problem and offer a step-by-step explanation of the correct solution.

In a March 2025 study of 3,682 U.S. high school students, Brainly found that 67% planned to use AI to prepare for their final exams, up from 59% a year ago. Another 80.6% of respondents said AI could improve their grades, up from 77% in 2024.

“We’re realizing that one-size-fits-all AI chatbots aren’t capable of adapting to each student’s individual learning style, emphasizing the need for personalized learning companions,” said Bill Salak, Brainly’s chief technology officer. “It’s important that schools teach students to become strategic users of technology not just as consumers, but as smart, effective decision-makers.”

Rapidly multiplying AI platforms have threatened to overwhelm some campuses.

Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said schools still struggle to train teachers how to use AI with appropriate materials.

“There are a lot of ‘resources’ out there that teachers use to supplement their district-provided instructional materials and many of them are low quality,” Ms. Peske said. “Given the nature of AI models, chances are high that AI will draw from these poor materials and perpetuate low-quality instruction.”

Experts urge students to start with the simplest AI platforms and watch carefully for any “hallucinations” that they may produce with false information.

“I recommend sticking to one or two platforms like ChatGPT so that they can learn the ins and outs of that one before exploring the festival of other tools and apps that are springing up every day,” said Dan Ulin, a psychologist who founded the Los Angeles-based Elite Student Coach to help teenagers get into top colleges.

AI literacy

Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have called on K-12 schools to teach AI literacy over the past year.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a law in October that requires AI literacy instruction in the state’s K-12 classrooms.

President Trump signed an April 23 executive order directing the Education and Labor departments to prioritize funding and opportunities for high school students to take AI classes and certification programs.

“American schools took big steps towards a screen-based educational system during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Yaron Litwin, chief financial officer of the AI-driven Canopy Parental Control app, which helps parents filter digital content. “Now, they are beginning to implement AI literacy initiatives on the federal, state and local levels.”

Tech industry employers argue that students with AI skills will have a better chance of landing future engineering, science and math-related jobs.

“Students require baseline AI literacy across all subjects, not just in computer science classes,” said Dev Nag, CEO of QueryPal, a San Francisco-based customer support automation company.

Mr. Nag pointed to national surveys showing that the share of teachers using AI jumped from 1 in 5 in early 2023 to more than 40% by the end of 2024. Over the same period, he noted that the share of teenagers using AI increased from 37% to 70%.

Sher Downing, CEO of Downing EdTech Consulting, said schools are moving to integrate AI in three areas from the earliest grade levels: a redesigned curriculum emphasizing human skills, new forms of testing that AI cannot easily replicate and programs ensuring AI access at all socioeconomic levels.

“Successful implementation hinges on using AI to augment rather than replace teaching, establishing clear ethical policies, and fostering teacher experimentation,” Ms. Downing said.

AI has also been effective in connecting emotionally and intellectually with special education students.

“It can help students with autism explore topics they love, ask creative questions, and engage in learning that’s personalized, meaningful and relevant,” said Katie Trowbridge, a Florida-based education consultant and former public high school teacher. “It can adapt content to fit their strengths, offer visuals or simplified language when needed, and even model social scenarios in low-pressure, safe ways that build confidence.”

Lingering concerns

According to education experts, a gradual curriculum of AI literacy from kindergarten through high school will best prepare students for future success.

Nevertheless, financial limitations and lingering concerns about academic dishonesty have kept AI out of many schools.

“When it comes to what to avoid with AI, I would caution against outright banning AI in the classroom,” said Caroline Allen, chief program officer at the right-leaning Center for Education Reform and a former teacher. “I would also advise against relying on AI-generated content without vetting it.”

Cyber safety experts say schools with digital literacy programs to integrate AI in all grades and classes have done better with disciplinary issues than campuses that relegate it to computer science classrooms.

“Rather than banning it altogether, teach students how to use this tool well,” said Allison J. Bonacci, director of education for Cyber Safety Consulting, an Illinois-based company that works with schools to develop internet safety policies. “Age-appropriate AI literacy can be integrated into all classes, not just tech classes.”

According to a 2024 UNESCO report, students’ critical thinking scores rose by 18% on average in schools that introduced AI with digital literacy programs. By contrast, they fell by 9% in schools that allowed AI without a digital literacy program to guide it.

“If students begin to treat AI like a shortcut for thinking, they may lose opportunities to build foundational cognitive skills,” said Marlee Strawn, co-founder of Scholar Education, a company that develops AI tools for K-12 classrooms.

Dana Bryson, senior vice president of social impact at the online learning platform Study.com, said another problem is that poor and minority communities have lagged in teaching AI.

She pointed to a recent Study.com survey that found 54% of teachers saw the promise of AI for individualized learning, but 64% worried it would contribute to “wider learning gaps.”

“Affluent communities and schools have more quickly embraced AI tools, while schools serving under-resourced households are often left out or even avoid them altogether,” Ms. Bryson said. “That tells us AI is neither inherently good nor bad. It’s a tool, and how we use it will determine whether it helps close gaps or deepen them.”

Catholic Schools Ahead of the Curve When It Comes to Curbing Cellphones

Matthew McDonald

Always connected? The latest technology? Easy access to the web? Cellphones everywhere?

St. Alphonsus Parish School in Seattle has none of that. And it doesn’t want it.

“When I tell prospective parents we’re tech-minimal, people light up about that,” said Nick Padrnos, who just started his fourth year as the principal. “It’s refreshing to them. I think everyone knows it intuitively makes sense.”

What does “tech-minimal” mean?

For one thing, no cellphones. Teachers can use them during the day. But students can’t.

Padrnos told the Register that a survey this past spring at the school, which serves about 185 kids in preschool through eighth grade, found that 75% of the more than 100 parents who responded said they wish they would have waited longer than they did to give their kids a cellphone. The parents not only put up with the no-cellphones policy at school, Padrnos told the Register — they embrace it.

“We talk about it a lot in Catholic schools: Parents are the primary educators,” Padrnos said, referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2223). “This movement, to me, is about empowering parents to reclaim that role.”

“Parents are just crying out for support,” he said. “I don’t think the Big Tech companies are going to give it to them. So that’s where we step in.”

Catholic schools across the U.S. like St. Alphonsus are ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing sensible policies aimed at keeping student distractions to a minimum. Nationally, exasperated teachers and parents are leading a charge to keep phones out of the classroom.

The California Legislature approved a bill Aug. 28 that requires public-school districts to adopt a policy by July 1, 2026, “to limit or prohibit the use by its pupils of smartphones” at school or school activities, including possible “enforcement mechanisms that limit access to smartphones.” The vote was almost unanimous in both chambers.

Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina have statewide restrictions in place. (Florida and South Carolina laws ban using a cellphone during class unless a teacher allows it; Louisiana law says a student can’t have a cellphone “on his person” during the school day.)

Ten other states either require (Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia) or recommend (Alabama, Connecticut, Washington) that school districts have a policy limiting use of cellphones or provide incentives (Arkansas, Delaware, Pennsylvania) for local school districts to do so, according to EducationWeek.

43 Minutes a Day 

Cellphones are common among kids at schools across the United States.

In a 2023 report called “Constant Companion,” Common Sense Media cited studies finding that about half of children in the United States get a smartphone by age 11. About 43% of kids ages 8 to 12 have one. That figure rises to 88% and higher for adolescents ages 13 to 18.

Kids who participated in a Common Sense Media study received a median of 237 notifications on their smartphone on a typical day, of which they saw or engaged with about 46. During school hours, students’ median use of cellphones took up about 43 minutes a day.

Such numbers have some school officials thinking smartphones aren’t good for students at school.

Some Catholic school administrators also are skeptical about cellphones.

“Our Catholic schools do not allow cellphone usage during instructional time. Most schools do not allow them during the school day,” said Brian Disney, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, by email.

Kevin Somok, principal of St. Jerome Academy, a Catholic parish school in Hyattsville, Maryland, that emphasizes classical education, told the Register that students there have to give up their cellphones at the beginning of the school day and can’t get them back while school is in session.

Somok is in his first year at St. Jerome, but he has had his own kids there as students for several years. He has also seen during his 19 years as a Catholic educator what cellphones do to social life in schools that allow them, even if only during non-class time such as lunch.

“Instead of talking to each other in the cafeteria, they’re looking at their phones. They’re missing out on positive interactions,” Somok said in a telephone interview.

Somok has five children. The oldest is 11. None has a cellphone.

“My 11-year-old, the way he interacts with his friends, it’s not on Instagram; it’s not on group chat. It’s a healthier childhood,” Somok said.

No Need for Change? 

Some Catholic-school systems don’t see a problem with cellphones in schools because they think they have them under control.

“Student cellphone usage during the school day is not a concern within the Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” a spokesman for the school system there told the Register by email. “Each school has established its own cellphone policy for students, tailored to meet the needs of their individual community, with best practices in place.”

Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, have some leeway in how they deal with cellphones, but most don’t allow students to use them most of the time.

“I don’t think we have a need to ban them, because we pretty much have in place a requirement to keep them in the backpacks or lockers and not to be used during school,” said Vince Cascone, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Kansas City. “We just need to make sure that that time in school is sacred and focused on learning, and we try to eliminate any distraction that a cellphone might bring.”

It’s a similar situation in the Archdiocese of Las Vegas.

“I don’t see them as a problem. I think the expectation is set: Students know when and where they can take their cellphones out,” said Catherine Thompson, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Las Vegas. “We don’t want it to be a distraction, but we know that it’s part of the fabric of our lives.”

The Book on Smartphones 

But some Catholic schools are rethinking their approach.

Most Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of San Antonio “restrict access and use of cellphones throughout the day, except for lunch and breaks,” Jordan McMurrough, a communications director for the archdiocese, told the Register.

But archdiocesan officials are thinking about doing more. This summer, Catholic school principals and pastors of parishes with Catholic schools were asked to read a book that came out earlier this year that recommends against allowing children to have smartphones, “and there is a move on campuses toward the direction of an even more phone-free environment, working in close consultation and discussions with administrators and families,” McMurrough said by email.

That book, The Anxious Generation:  How The Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argues that the transition from a “play-based childhood’ to a “phone-based childhood” during the past couple of decades has led to sharp increases in anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation, addiction and self-harm.

Haidt, whose arguments have been challenged by some, calls for no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, and no cellphones capable of receiving text messages available to kids in school during the school day.

“Let’s get kids through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers,” Haidt writes in the book.

Distraction? 

Cellphone restrictions get mixed reviews.

At St. Alphonsus School in Seattle, two eighth-graders told the Register they don’t mind the policy.

Callum MacLeod, 13, has had an iPhone 10 for more than a year, and he has friends at other schools who use their cellphones at school to listen to music and read text messages. But he said he prefers being without one at school.

“I never feel the urge to want my phone during school time. I don’t think about my phone during class. I just focus on my schoolwork,” he said.

Emma Noble, 13, has an Android cellphone with no access to the internet, which she got about a month ago. But she, too, said she doesn’t mind the school’s policy preventing her from having access to it during the school day.

“I like it because it really makes sure you get your mind on your schoolwork instead of, ‘Oh, what are my friends texting about? What are these people doing right now?’” she said.

But some find such restrictions concerning.

Matthew Haas has had five children go through Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Only the youngest, a 16-year-old junior, has to deal with the school’s new policy requiring students to keep their cellphones in their lockers while classes are going on.

Haas told the Register he understands the need to limit use of cellphones during the school day. But like his daughter, he said, he’d prefer that she have immediate access to her phone in the event of an emergency, particularly if she doesn’t have time to get to her locker.

“I am all for no phones active during classes,” Haas said in a telephone interview. “But some of the more restrictive ones like that, where you can’t have it in your bookbag, that’s tough for me.”

Even so, restricting cellphones seems to be a trend.

Jesuit Father John Belmonte, superintendent of Catholic education in the Diocese of Venice, Florida, told the Register that he recently proposed to principals there “a diocesan-wide ban on cellphones at our diocesan schools.”

Liz Repking, chief executive officer of Cyber Safety Consulting, who advises schools and parents about cellphones and related technology, said she is hoping to start a pilot program at two or three schools in the diocese starting in January 2025 in which students would be required to put their cellphones in a lockable fabric pouch at the beginning of the school day, which would be unlocked for them at the end of the day.

“It completely unplugs the kids for six to seven hours a day, which is a wonderful thing,” Repking said.

She said pushback to similar policies tends to come from parents who are worried about not being able to contact their children quickly if after-school plans change or in an emergency.

“We’re really accustomed in society to immediately having access to whoever we want, whenever we want. And they want that access to their kids,” Repking said. “Parents, they just want to have that level of control. We have to recognize the parents’ concerns and address them.”

Addressing those concerns, she said, could include setting up a system in which students can get a message at school within an hour or so, either by telephone through the central office or through a dedicated email station. As for emergencies, by which many parents mean active-shooter situations, she points out to clients that training for lockdowns in schools includes no talking and no noise, with teachers giving kids instructions by hand signals, and that a cellphone might be a hindrance in such a situation rather than a help.

A more constant negative factor, she said, is distraction.

The most obvious distraction is during class, if a student is paying attention to a cellphone rather than to a teacher.

But another kind of distraction comes from the constant urge to check other kids’ social-media postings throughout the day. Eliminating access to cellphones eliminates that problem, Repking said.

“It’s just kind of a very level playing field: No one’s on their phones; no one’s posting anything on social media,” she said. “You’re not missing anything.”

Liz was recently featured on the Safety Is Sexy podcast discussing how to help young people get safe and savvy online. “Thanks for the opportunity to express our thoughts on ‘Sexy Online Safety” 😊 (Don’t worry – the podcast is rated G!)”, says Liz. Listen and learn all about a myriad of topics from what Cyber Safety Consulting is seeing in school to tips for the summer to avoid fights at home over screen time and how to support young people in building healthy digital habits.