As a teacher assigns an important, grade-defining essay, Chromebooks flip open in unison across a classroom. A student stares at a blank Google Doc for a long moment and then opens another tab. Within seconds, paragraphs that meet the rubric requirements begin to appear on their screen, the writing clear, structured and almost too polished.
Free and easily accessible Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can generate essays, explain math problems, translate languages, create images and summarize entire academic journals in seconds. Outside of school, AI recommends what we shop for, filters our email spam and personalizes our social media feeds. With its many capabilities, it’s becoming just as prevalent in the classroom.
In a school environment already built around Chromebooks and online submissions, AI is an efficient and simple solution for students struggling with their assignments. According to a survey of 209 Madison students, 85% of students have reported using some form of AI for academic purposes. Some use it to brainstorm ideas or check grammar, while others utilize it to explain confusing concepts or generate practice problems. Around 28% admit to using it to draft entire assignments.
But one danger with using generative AI as a source for learning is the risk of misinformation and bias. AI systems are unable to “know” information in the way that a teacher or a textbook does, and they can only generate content based on the data they were trained on. This leads to confidently produced false information often referred to as “hallucinations”. In addition to inaccuracies, AI systems can reflect and reinforce biases present in the data they were trained on, potentially twisting conversations about history, science and social issues. When students rely on AI to learn without verifying its responses, these errors and prejudices can often incorrectly shape their understanding of a topic, making skills like information literacy crucial in the age of modern schooling.
However, the most significant concern for schools is academic integrity. In education systems across the country, including in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), distinctions between the use of AI as a method of support for completing a task or a way of cheating are still being developed and clarified. At Madison, students report that the standards and expectations around the use of AI in the classroom are not always clearly defined, and since they can vary by class, assignment or teacher, there is often uncertainty about what is permitted and what students may receive an honor code violation for.
School policy also adds another layer to the issue. Since the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was passed in 2001, FCPS has used a filtering program on school-owned devices to restrict certain websites that the system or administrations deem “harmful to students.” While this policy was put in place so that schools would block inappropriate and violent content, in FCPS, it has also been applied to online gaming websites and music platforms. More recently, the county has applied their content restrictions to AI tools.
On school laptops, platforms such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude have been blocked due to their characterization as “AI – Generative.” In addition to these general AI models, FCPS has also restricted AI engines marketed as educational.
For example, students have reported using platforms like OtterAI to produce transcripts of videos and NotebookLM to create study guides and flashcards. Regardless of their educational benefits, these platforms are still blocked at school, leading some to question if FCPS is handling the rise of AI in the best way.
“They are aiming to regulate the usage of AI on school assignments, but I think that they should also look at how we as youth can use AI positively to prepare ourselves for future jobs,” Gabriella Bremer (’28) said.
However, students aren’t the only ones using AI to aid with academics. Teachers are beginning to include AI in their professional lives as a way to manage growing workloads. Around 83% of students have noticed educators using AI to create lesson plans, assignments and tests, as well as using it as a grading tool in order to increase their productivity.
But not all students see the shift to technology in a positive light.
“In English class, my teacher used ChatGPT to write the whole 12 page directions doc for our summative project,” Audrey Bang (’29) said. “It contradicted itself on almost every page, and I seriously struggled to get the information I needed from it.”
In addition to a lack of accuracy in AI-enhanced assignments, students are also concerned about the loss of personal feedback and the human connection that defines typical teaching.
“I don’t like it when teachers use AI because it makes me feel like they don’t care about the work,” Mia Dinia (’28) said. “If they’re not passionate about the assignment, why should I be?”
At the same time, many educators point out that AI can improve the classroom experience when used responsibly. In an era of Madison plagued with growing class sizes and teacher shortages, generative AI could help teachers complete repetitive or administrative tasks. This would allow them to spend more time on instruction and individual support for students.
“We wanted to recognize the need to innovate the way we can use technology as a tool, not as a replacement, to move instructional and assessment practices forward,” Technology Specialist Derrick Rauenzahn said.
However, transparency is important for educators to maintain their trust with students. Clear communication about when and how AI is used in the classroom can help students feel confident that their teacher is still actively involved in reviewing and guiding their work. Establishing clear guidelines can help ensure that technology is being used to enhance the professional skills of real people as opposed to replacing them. That being said, for students, too much reliance on AI does present a significant risk to their development of crucial skills.
While utilizing AI for brainstorming, organization and editing may improve the quality of the final product, it allows students to offload some of the cognitive power. For example, brainstorming topics without the use of technology requires persevering through a considerable amount of idea-less minutes before any sort of lightbulb moment hits. This takes a large amount of time and effort, but also forces one to vigorously work their creativity muscles. Asking AI to brainstorm topics means that students aren’t developing their creativity and their essay isn’t the product of their own imagination. While more efficient, the use of AI for brainstorming, as well as other tasks, ensures future reliance on it as creativity and critical thinking are not being practiced.
Of course, efficiency and quality of results trump all in the workforce, and even in everyday life. But school isn’t about efficiency – it’s about building those most critical cognitive skills.
Unfortunately, the current school system incentivises strong outcomes and pushes students to do so as efficiently as possible. Over half of students report using AI to brainstorm ideas, 40% report using it to edit papers and 50% to provide feedback, showing the popularity of the technology. Rather than spending the time to write an imperfect high school-level paper fully by oneself, students find it necessary to finish as quickly as possible to get to the next pile of assignments. They often feel immense pressure to achieve perfect grades in as many AP classes as they can squeeze in, particularly in competitive school systems like FCPS, which can make turning to AI even more appealing.
“The temptation is difficult to resist,“ English teacher Lauren Arvis said. “And I understand that when it comes to competing with their peers and maintaining their grades, for many students, it simply makes sense to use AI.”
The issue is that more completed work does not necessarily mean a student has learned more. Writing three essays with the help of AI challenges one’s brain less than attempting to write one essay with a pencil and paper.
“Providing teachers with your raw, authentic writing is the best way for them to help you,” Arvis said. “Using AI is the easy way out in the immediate present, but disciplining yourself to learn all you can about your writing while you have teachers who can help you to improve will benefit you so much more in the long run.”
In many situations, AI is used as a crutch. When students have trouble with an assignment or a task feels too tedious, it takes just a few clicks to have everything laid out and completed for them. The decline in problem solving skills and motivation to exert a bit more effort to understand a concept is significant. Students rely less on teachers or tutors, simply prompting AI to explain a topic. While AI can give students the basic information they need to comprehend a new topic, having such a tool so easily accessible means that students naturally resort to asking AI instead of taking the time to figure it out themselves. This means that instead of critically thinking through the problem, they have the answer given to them.
“When I’m trying to critically think and problem solve on my own, I’m thinking in ways that make sense to me specifically, and by doing that, I will keep the understanding of it in my head longer because I made that understanding myself through my own connections,” Marianna Georges (’26) said. “Reading an explanation [of a problem or concept] off of ChatGPT gives me an understanding in the first minute but doesn’t allow it to stick into my head.”
Still, it’s impossible to ignore that AI’s advanced capabilities could be used to personalize and improve learning. In fact, there’s evidence that shows its effectiveness. According to the Brookings AI report, a 2021 meta analysis found that technology-supported personalized learning programs, especially ones that adapt to a learner’s level, have a positive effect on learning outcomes. Another study in the Brookings AI report found that Harvard University undergraduate physics students learned more and reported higher engagement when working with an AI tutor compared to classroom instruction.
“In AP Physics, since the problem solving process is really long, asking [AI] at each step ‘why are we doing this?’ has been really helpful,” Gabriella Harris (’26) said.
The individualized resources can also be beneficial, such as for Sohom Petersen (’28) who finds that learning through AI better suits his personal learning style.
“I’ve always been someone who struggles with being lectured inside a classroom,” Petersen said. “And this is where AI comes in. Getting the slidedecks from classes and then using AI as a tutor is something that has benefited me. I can use it to help me understand the more specific parts of a topic which has allowed me to learn even more than I ever could with a teacher.”
AI also has unlimited availability to provide extra practice or answer questions, unlike teachers who are only there during class or Warhawk Time.
“I’ll put in pictures of my homework and have it generate similar problems for me to try on my own,” Harris said. “It’s been really helpful to reinforce learning before a test because it instantly will generate questions and tell me whether my question is right or not, so I don’t have to go through the process of creating a Quizlet.”
With the capabilities of AI improving every year at alarming rates, many experts speculate large changes in society, leaving high school students uncertain of what their futures will look like. This uncertainty leads students and teachers to question what should even be taught to give them the highest chance of success after education.
“There is really no way to tell what will happen with AI,” Eloise Smith (’29) said. “This is all new territory.”
In fact, 50% of students report feeling that Madison is not properly preparing them with the skills and tools they need for their future regarding AI in the workplace.
Given that students don’t feel prepared, changes to the school system must be made to adapt to the future, a perspective that 67% of surveyed students agree with.
But some wonder if significant changes are worthwhile due to how rapidly advancements are being made. If administrators put in time, effort and money into creating more useful courses incorporating AI, by the time they have been developed and implemented, there could be new improvements that render the changes irrelevant.
Fortunately, some skills will be important to develop no matter how they are applied. The World Economic Forum cites analytical thinking, creativity, resilience, adaptability, motivation and lifelong learning as some of the most valuable skills on the rise.
And while AI has access to billions of sources and can process them in a fraction of a second, it falls short in its critical thinking. It cannot make its own new ideas, only recycle and recombine information found on the internet. Students can use AI to fill out worksheets and find facts, but not to accurately draw unique conclusions.
“As the digital world begins to take over, we need to build our cognitive skills even stronger,” Smith said. “Yes, part of that is being media literate, but I more so mean human interaction, being emotionally intelligent, and to be able to problem solve. We need to be able to do this, WITHOUT AI.”
AI has taken over many aspects of schooling and the workforce, but soft skills and non-technical traits such as emotional intelligence, ethical judgment and creativity are still a necessity. These soft skills give human-made work an imperfect uniqueness that cannot be replaced by AI, which is why it is essential that schools focus on their development.
However, AI literacy is also a vital addition to curricula.
“AI is a tool, and the fact that it will be used is inevitable,” Yiming Chen (’26) said. “Madison needs to stop treating it as a danger to students, but should focus on teaching students proper ways to use it.”
AI literacy is the set of skills required to use and understand AI effectively. Many students aren’t trained on how to use AI as a study enhancer and don’t know which platforms and ways of prompting are reliable.
“They discourage using AI a lot, but they don’t really say how to use it correctly,” Sean Clinton (’26) said.
This can lead students to drift into misinformed habits and unreliable platforms at home where there’s no restrictions. Learning how to use AI properly at school can prevent this.
Beyond applying AI fluency to a student’s current studies, the skills built by learning how to prompt will likely serve them after high school. To some, the formal integration of AI into curricula is the obvious choice, considering it will be applied to most careers and fields in the future.
“The advancement of AI is something that cannot be prevented, and it will soon be implemented in almost every modern day job,” Bang said. “If students enter the workforce with little to no knowledge of how to use AI, or even how it works, they will fall behind to others who have grown up using it.”
In the weeds of growing uncertainty and strongly diverging voices over AI use, it’s easy for teachers, students and schools to fall into a trap of inaction. But it’s possible that seemingly distinct responses may actually be cohesive. Students could focus on building crucial cognitive skills in technology-free classes while also acquiring critical abilities to create products and solve problems through practice with AI prompt engineering. By sharing their AI use strategies, teachers can more efficiently complete mundane tasks while also building student trust and knowledge.
“You really have to let people know why it matters to be a thinker and not just someone who is taking what AI is giving them,” Petersen said. “Because at the end of the day it’s the people who know how to use [AI properly] that are going to be successful. Not the people who are just using it to do everything for them.”
