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How students should — and shouldn’t — use artificial intelligence - MSU Denver RED

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Co-directors of MSU Denver’s Generative AI Task Force offer insights on using platforms such as ChatGPT as a tool rather than a crutch.

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Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom

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Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom

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As some teachers start to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their work, a majority are uncertain about or see downsides to the general use of AI tools in K-12 education, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2023.

A quarter of public K-12 teachers say using AI tools in K-12 education does more harm than good. About a third (32%) say there is about an equal mix of benefit and harm, while only 6% say it does more good than harm. Another 35% say they aren't sure.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand public K-12 teachers' views on the use of artificial intelligence tools in K-12 education. To do this, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers are members of RAND's American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public school K-12 teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to ensure they are representative of the target population.

We also used data from a separate survey of 1,453 U.S. teens conducted from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

The survey on teens was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants. Find more details about the survey of teens here.

Here are the questions we asked teachers and teens, along with responses, and the methodology for the survey of teachers and for the survey of teens.

How teachers' views differ by school level

High school teachers are more likely than elementary and middle school teachers to hold negative views about AI tools in education.

About a third of high school teachers (35%) say these tools do more harm than good. Roughly a quarter of middle school teachers (24%) and 19% of elementary school teachers say the same.

Fewer than one-in-ten teachers at all levels say these tools do more good than harm.

Some 47% of elementary school teachers say they aren't sure about the impact of AI tools in K-12 education. That is much larger than the shares of middle and high school teachers who say this.

Teens' experiences with and views of ChatGPT

In a separate survey, we asked U.S. teens about their experience with and views of ChatGPT, a generative AI tool, in their schoolwork.

Among teens who have heard of ChatGPT, 19% say they have used it to help them with schoolwork. This is more common among teens in higher grades. About a quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT (24%) say they have used it in their schoolwork, compared with 17% of 9th and 10th graders and 12% of 7th and 8th graders.

Teens' views on whether using ChatGPT is acceptable depend on what it's being used for. Among teens who have heard of ChatGPT:

69% say it's acceptable to use it to research new topics.

39% say it's acceptable to use it to solve math problems.

20% say it's acceptable to use it to write essays.

Shares ranging from 18% to 24% aren't sure whether it is acceptable to use ChatGPT in each of these situations.

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT. That includes 23% who have heard a lot about it and 44% who have heard a little about it. Roughly a third (32%) say they have heard nothing at all about ChatGPT.
Note: Here are the questions we asked teachers and teens, along with responses, and the methodology for the survey of teachers and for the survey of teens.

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A quarter of U.S. teachers say AI tools do more harm than good in K-12 education

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High school teachers are more likely than elementary and middle school teachers to hold negative views about AI tools in education.

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For years, educators have already been using some products powered by artificial intelligence to teach or to help with logistics, such as planning bus routes.

But in recent months, the rise of ChatGPT -an AI-powered tool that can write anything with just a simple prompt-has ignited debates about the benefits and drawbacks of the use of artificial intelligence in education.

Some educators are worried about how students might use AI-driven technologies like ChatGPT to cheat on school assignments, and others are embracing these products to save them time in responding to emails and creating rubrics.

Nearly half of educators who responded to a recent EdWeek Research Center survey said AI would have a negative or very negative impact on teaching and learning in the next five years. Twenty-seven percent said AI's impact would be positive or very positive.

In the open-ended response section of the survey-which was conducted between March 29 and April 11 and had responses from 863 teachers, principals, and district leaders-two dozen educators told us how they felt about AI.

From concerns about its harms to ideas on how it will change the education system, here's what they said.

AI will change education

-District superintendent | California

- Elementary school principal | California

- High school principal | Washington state

- High school principal | Georgia

Educators need to discuss and learn more about AI

- District superintendent | West Virginia

- District administrator for curriculum/instruction | Tennessee

- District assistant superintendent | Oregon

- High school principal | Wisconsin

Some educators believe AI will be harmful

- Middle school teacher | Massachusetts

- District administrator for student services | Iowa

- High school teacher | Missouri

- District administrator for curriculum/instruction | Arkansas

Some say it will be useful

- District administrator for curriculum/instruction | New Jersey

- Elementary school teacher | Idaho

Others acknowledged the nuance between the benefits and drawbacks

- High school teacher | California

- Elementary school principal | Texas

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What Educators Think About Using AI in Schools

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From concerns about harms to ideas on how it will change education, here's what educators said about the use of AI in K-12.

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Trump Admin. Suddenly Cancels Dozens of Education Department Contracts

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The Trump administration abruptly terminated dozens of contracts financed by the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

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A tool that helps educators sift through dense curriculum research. Surveys on school crime. Long-term studies examining outcomes for high schoolers after graduation.

All those services and more came to a sudden standstill this week as the Trump administration abruptly revoked nearly $900 million in contracts funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team late Monday touted the termination of 89 education department contracts. Though at least a handful touch on diversity, equity, and inclusion, most seem to stem from the agency's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.

IES' placement at the bullseye of the Trump administration's bid to bash the education bureaucracy is a signal that a different breed of Republican is in charge during this second term, said Frederick Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

During Trump's first term, his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, espoused GOP K-12 pillars like expanding school choice and shrinking the federal role in education. But she "stepped gingerly" around established institutions, Hess said.

By contrast, this "new flavor of MAGA populism," epitomized by Musk, is "far less interested in trying to make subtle distinctions between constructive federal activity data collection versus the problematic."

Research projects on the chopping block

Education researchers and those who count on federal education data on Tuesday were taking stock of the impact of the cascade of contract cancellations.

While the Trump administration has not released a detailed list of eliminated contracts, sources familiar with the programs say they include the What Works Clearinghouse, which gathers and summarizes education research; ERIC, an online repository of education studies; the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which collects demographic and outcomes data from colleges and universities; and the review panels that assess applications for funding from the National Center for Education Research and National Center for Special Education Research, two other sub-agencies within IES.

Some of the functions for which IES is most recognized-including NAEP; the College Scorecard, which displays colleges' outcomes and cost data; and the College Navigator, another tool for exploring colleges-were not part of the contract cancellations, the spokesperson said.

'All this breakage is essential'

Many on Tuesday blasted the swift and seemingly indiscriminate cancellations and questioned the wisdom of terminating hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for work still in progress. Others argued that a review of federal research priorities has long been overdue.

"It would be one thing to say, all right, we're going to undertake a careful process of examination to determine which of these contracts are really paying off," said Adam Gamoran, the president of the William T. Grant Foundation and former chair of IES's advisory board. "But to take a sledgehammer to the whole set of contracts is capricious and surely throwing out many, many important studies that are giving us crucial information that we need to understand the state and progress in the American education system."

The longitudinal studies IES funds provide important context around changes in students' mental health, absenteeism, and competitiveness in math and science, argued Gamoran, whom former President Joe Biden tapped as director of IES last fall. The Senate did not confirm Gamoran before the end of the Biden administration; Matthew Soldner continues to serve as the agency's acting director.

But Mark Schneider, who started directing IES during the first Trump administration before leaving the agency last year, viewed the contract cancellations as much-needed housekeeping. Schneider said he spent much of his tenure at the agency pushing to overhaul grant and contract procedures and major longitudinal studies like IPEDS. While some of the questions asked in IES' main postsecondary education data collection are congressionally mandated, he said, others have been held over from individual and outdated research projects.

"Don't tell me that we're going to do surveys because we've been doing surveys for 60 years," he said. "Tell me what the indicators are that we get from surveys and tell me, are our longitudinal surveys the best way to get it?"

Ending older longitudinal studies may clear the way to develop faster and more precise data and research, Schneider said.

"All this breakage is in some ways essential," said Schneider, now a senior scholar at AEI, "The question is, what happens next? You know, 'move fast and break things' is fine, except then what do you build?"

Contract cancellations come amid other Education Department downsizing

The move to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in education research and evaluation contracts follows recent action by the Trump administration and Elon Musk's DOGE team to start downsizing the Education Department, in line with a campaign pledge Trump repeatedly made to close the agency.

But as the Trump administration shrinks the department's portfolio by canceling these contracts, it is rolling back what conservative critics of the education department have long touted as an appropriate role for the federal government in education: statistics-gathering-a function that dates all the way back to education's pre-Cabinet origins-and research dissemination.

And back in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan's education secretary wrote a memo recommending that the then-new Education Department be converted to a small foundation, he envisioned federal support for education research as one of its primary roles.

Some cancellations will have an immediate impact on schools

Several of the contract eliminations would have an immediate impact on schools' work.

The What Works Clearinghouse, designed in the early 2000s to support a shift to evidence-based practice in schools, assesses the quality and strength of research around various curricula and other instructional interventions. Its related practice guides, designed for educators, are clear introductions into topics such as mathematics interventions for struggling students and high school writing, with links to research supporting their recommendations.

It is not clear whether the suspension of the review panels that assess applications for research funding means no new research grants will be funded. And several of the largest data collections that could be threatened are themselves used by scores of researchers for studies.

"The department says we're going to protect the College Scorecard. Well, you can't do the college scorecard without IPEDS, right? And we're going to protect NAEP. But you can't do NAEP without the [Common Core of Data]," Schneider said. "It's a lot more bound up than just these discrete things unrelated to one another. That's the problem with moving fast and breaking things without understanding that if you break X, you're actually breaking Y and Z."

'Everyone is stranded'

The nixed contracts include a deep, multi-year investigation into how to use high-quality commercial products to teach math skills to students who are more than a year behind-a notoriously difficult group to reach. The project cost over a $1 million and has been progressing for over two years, said one of researchers involved.

This school year has been a "major data collection year" but the order from IES means the work can't be completed, said this researcher, who spoke without attribution in order to be candid about the consequences of the contract's termination.

Districts that had been receiving the services have called the researchers, upset, he added.

"We're working with schools in all different parts of the country on this. It's not a blue state thing," the researcher said. "They're all calling us because there's a direct withdrawal of service of something that they're using with their students and depending on having in place for the year. The companies were working with us in good faith. Everyone is stranded."

The terminated contracts include work that Musk's belt-tighteners saw as tainted by DEI-a toxic concept in MAGA world and the subject of a first-day Trump executive order that sought to eliminate DEI initiatives from the federal government.

One such contract is a roughly five-year collaboration between the Illinois education department and WestEd, a research and educational services organization, investigating strategies to recruit and develop leaders for hard-to-staff schools. Although the project included a focus on principals of color, its work was applicable to all sorts of environments that struggle to attract leaders, including remote rural schools.

"There's some really great work here that could benefit kids, communities and families," said Jannelle Kubinec, WestEd's chief executive officer.

Eliminating these contracts may say more about what Musk's group can do without congressional action than any particular efficiency goals. IES represents only about 1 percent of the Education Department's $80 billion budget. But hacking most of the department's pricier bedrock grants-like Title I for disadvantaged students, special education, and Pell-would require approval from lawmakers, all of whom have students in their congressional districts that depend on the money.

Similarly, high-profile contracts like the Regional Educational Labs, which have come up on the chopping block repeatedly under prior administrations, are protected by congressional mandates. Those labs offer research and technical support to states and districts.

That leaves IES's other contracts as among the few spending areas in the Education Department that can be easily cut, said Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, IES' first director when the agency was created under President George W. Bush.

"If your goal is to end up with an organization that's leaner and more effective than the one you've got now, [the contract elimination] makes no sense," Whitehurst said. "But if your goal is to chop what you can and stay away from the things that would raise clear legal issues about your authority to do this, [the contract terminations] make sense."

Eliminating the longitudinal studies could backfire on DOGE, said Whitehurst, now a nonresident fellow in the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute.

"Most of what Musk's people have done is around increasing efficiency, reducing waste, spending money on things that are important rather than unimportant," Whitehurst said. "But how do you know that if you don't have any information on those things? It's shortsighted to me."

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Educators Reeling as Trump Takes 'Sledgehammer' to Education Department Contracts

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Research projects and services came to a sudden standstill as Trump abruptly revoked nearly $900 million in Education Department contracts.