Chalkbeat

Virtual school enrollment has doubled in recent years, following pandemic-era surge

2026-08-27T20:29:44+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Data analysis by Kae Petrin.

Remote learning during the pandemic was a nightmare for some students, but others have stuck with it, new data shows.

Just over 600,000 public school students attended fully virtual schools in the 2024-25 school year, the most recent data available. That’s about 1 in 80 public school children — a twofold increase since before the pandemic.

This reflects the growth of school choice: In more places, families who want to opt their children out of traditional schooling can and are doing so with public funding. Many families seek out online education because traditional schooling isn’t working for a variety of reasons. Yet prior research has raised pointed questions about the quality of virtual schooling. These concerns once drew significant attention, but ironically they have faded from the national discourse even as digital schooling has rapidly grown.

Virtual school enrollment spiked in the 2020-21 school year in the midst of the pandemic. Some families may have believed that a stand-alone virtual school would be better than the makeshift online programs that many school districts were standing up. This was not just a one-year blip, however, as the new data shows.

A majority of fully virtual students are in charter schools. Two companies that run online schools, Stride and Pearson, account for a large chunk of virtual enrollment. A recent earnings report from Stride said its virtual schools, known as K12, now enroll over 240,000 students in public and private schools. “Demand for educational choices remains strong,” the report said. In recent years, more school districts have also launched their own online options.

Among high school students, 1.6% were in fully virtual public schools, compared to 0.8% of students in grades 1-8.

The Education Department used to regularly report on the number of virtual school students, but like many other statistics, it has not updated these figures recently. Chalkbeat calculated up-to-date numbers, which had not been previously reported.

An additional 195,000 students were enrolled in schools that are categorized as primarily online with some in-person opportunities.

The federal numbers may undercount online school enrollment. For example, according to that data, 1% of Indiana students were in fully virtual schools in the fall of 2024. A Chalkbeat analysis using more detailed state data pegged enrollment at virtual schools at about 3% that year. States vary in the share of students in virtual schools, though differences in response rates and program structures mean cross-state comparisons should be interpreted with caution.

Several studies, based on data from before the pandemic, have found that students tend to make much less academic progress and graduate at lower rates in virtual charters. In 2016, prompted by concerns about quality, a trio of pro-charter school groups issued a high-profile call to close low-performing online charters. Reporting in states including Indiana and Colorado has raised concerns about misspending and inflated student enrollment in certain virtual charters.

Patrick Wolf, a University of Arkansas professor, noted that existing research may not be able to adequately account for the type of students who opt into virtual schools when assessing the quality of the education in these settings.

“Students who learn remotely may also perform somewhat lower than expected on in-person state assessments, not because of instruction quality, but because the testing environment itself is unfamiliar,” said Brooke Gabbert, a spokesperson for K12 virtual schools. “These students typically learn and test at home.”

A teacher at New York City’s district-run online school previously told Chalkbeat that students go virtual for a variety of reasons, such as disabilities that make attending a regular school challenging; flexibility for students who are caregivers; and difficulties in a prior school.

“Many of our students face social and personal challenges, so our work extends beyond delivering content,” said the teacher, Jude Julien.

Wolf says if test scores are a priority, online schooling is probably not a good option for most. “Parents should be informed about that reality and factor it into their decision making,” he says. The growth of virtual schooling is a sign of the times, though: The priority in education policy in recent years has been responding to parent demand rather than raising test scores.

Since online schools have grown rapidly, up-to-date and better research about the quality of education they’re providing seems like an urgent priority.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams inked a $200 million internet deal for student Chromebooks. Mamdani is canceling it.

2026-08-27T16:58:47+00:00

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A year ago, former Mayor Eric Adams launched a sweeping, and costly, new plan to bridge the digital divide in the city’s public schools: purchasing 350,000 new Chromebook laptops equipped with free T-Mobile internet service.

The four-year contract, set to cost the city nearly $330 million, aimed to help schools with large shares of low-income and homeless families whose students lacked internet access outside of school.

But a year into the contract, Adams’ successor, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is canceling the T-Mobile internet service portion of the contract, which costs the city roughly $3.5 million per month, officials said Thursday. Over the full four years of the contract, the internet service was expected to cost around $200 million.

Mamdani’s administration, which is looking to cut costs amid a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, said the city was paying for more internet coverage than necessary and could secure internet service for students who need it at a lower cost. Officials didn’t immediately say how much they expect to save.

The T-Mobile contract “duplicated existing resources at an unnecessary cost,” Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein said. “By discontinuing this component of this contract, we are saving taxpayer dollars while continuing to deliver the internet connectivity we know our school communities rely on.”

The move also comes amid a growing backlash against the reliance on technology in city classrooms. Critics, including some parents and educators, say screen time has become too pervasive, detracting from learning.

Even before the city inked the T-Mobile contract, an existing program allowed principals to secure LTE service for students who need it for $10 per student per month, Education Department officials said. Officials said that service comes through Verizon, and can add internet to any school-issued Chromebooks or iPads.

Officials notified principals Thursday that the T-Mobile student data plans will end Aug. 31. They asked school leaders to compile lists of students who need internet access and purchase service through the Verizon program by the start of school on Sept. 10. Officials said they have already purchased all 350,000 Chromebooks and distributed them to schools, but didn’t say how many were given to students or how many students were using the internet service.

Several principals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, described mixed experiences with the massive internet-enabled laptop distribution.

At one Manhattan high school, about one in five students used the new devices and relied on them to connect to the internet at home, according to the school leader.

The principal worried that ending the T-Mobile contract would shift more costs to the school’s budget.

But at a Brooklyn high school, dozens of the computers sit unused in a storage room.

“It’s a tremendous waste,” the principal said, adding that students prefer to access the internet through their phones. Plus, the school has shifted away from using Chromebooks during class because of concerns that an overreliance on technology was getting in the way of student learning, the principal said.

Some officials and lawmakers began expressing concerns about the T-Mobile contract in the months after it was signed, New York Focus reported last December. One official told the outlet that the city did not approach competing wireless providers, and was stuck paying a flat fee for the service regardless of how many students used it.

Lawmakers also worried the city was paying for internet service for far more students than needed it. A state Education Department survey from 2020 estimated that about 13% of the city’s public school students lacked sufficient internet at home, according to New York Focus. The city’s public schools currently enroll about 793,000 K-12 students, meaning about 104,000 would lack internet if the 13% estimate held.

City officials said in 2025 that about 30% of households, containing around 2.5 million residents, did not have both home broadband and mobile internet access. City officials have separately launched efforts to improve Wi-Fi in homeless shelters.

Adams said the T-Mobile school internet deal was funded in part by savings the city made through another deal that made T-Mobile the city’s major service carrier.

The Education Department spends roughly $13 billion a year on contracts, and Mamdani has identified the agency’s contracting — and particularly its spending on student devices — as ripe for cost-cutting.

Officials said the T-Mobile contract was approved by the Panel for Educational Policy, which oversees Education Department contracts, but was held by the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation.

City officials purchased and distributed some 725,000 devices for students during the COVID pandemic but have not tracked how many of those devices remain operational.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who instituted a statewide bell-to-bell cellphone ban last school year, is considering imposing limits on screen time for younger kids. The Education Department is revising its artificial intelligence guidance for schools and has barred schools from purchasing new software until the guidance is finalized.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools head toward first day without gradebooks and other software amid tech freeze

2026-08-26T20:27:04+00:00

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After intense backlash to its initial artificial intelligence policy, New York City’s Education Department ordered principals last month to halt software purchases while officials develop new guidelines.

But the city has yet to release a new policy or lift the purchasing freeze despite the approaching Sept. 10 start of school. Principals are increasingly worried they won’t have access to key software programs — including electronic gradebooks and platforms teachers use to communicate with families — for the first day.

Four public school administrators, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal, said they have been unable to make routine software purchases, even for programs they’ve used for years that do not rely on AI.

“Two weeks before the start of school, we’re not sure what we’re going to be allowed to have and not allowed to have,” said one Brooklyn high school principal. “It’s a huge pain.”

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels announced the moratorium on software purchases in early July to give the city time to develop a stronger AI policy. An initial set of guidelines released in March ignited fierce pushback from families who said it did not do enough to limit AI, especially for young children.

Samuels later acknowledged the policy “missed the mark” and indicated the final guidance would include clearer limits. An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions for this story, including about when the guidance will be released or when software purchases may resume.

That uncertainty is causing headaches for school leaders, who often use basic education software tools that require annual purchase orders.

School leaders said they have been unable to renew subscriptions to digital hall passes or electronic gradebooks, raising fears the programs will not be available for students’ return.

Another administrator was unable to order software programs designed to help students who need more support in reading and math, including i-Ready, a major tech platform. Separately, the Education Department provides schools with access to i-Ready for required student assessments.

“I’m concerned about the operation of the school,” a second high school principal said.

Samuels initially suggested that software tools required for “mandated services or school opening needs” would be exempt from the pause, though multiple principals said they have not yet heard back about their requests to buy software during the freeze.

Some experts said the city has good reasons to be cautious about pressing ahead with education software tools, given concerns around student privacy, data breaches, and the proliferation of AI tools and chatbots added to products that schools have long used.

But Tom Liam Lynch, an expert who previously worked on education technology for the Education Department, said the city is behind the curve in developing a clear digital learning strategy.

“It’s really late in the game for the city to be figuring this out,” he said, noting the school system has struggled to adapt to AI.

He said that there are risks to releasing guidance so close to the start of the school. Principals typically plan well in advance of September and the last-minute technology policy could upend choices schools have already made about how to support teachers and students.

“Schools are unfortunately going to be in a position where they have to scramble with this,” he said. “That doesn’t lead to what you really want when it comes to quality pedagogy.”

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

The problem with an AI tutor: Students don’t want to use it

2026-08-25T23:25:23+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

If you build it, they may not use it.

This is the emerging problem with artificial intelligence tools designed to help students learn. The latest evidence is a new study finding that middle school students rarely used an AI-powered tutor when given the option to do so.

The study examined Khanmigo, an AI chatbot associated with the popular Khan Academy program. The findings confirm the sentiment of founder Sal Khan, who previously told me that the AI tutor was a “non-event” for most students.

“If a keen, engaged student wants to use the technology as a good tutor, it’s ready to go,” said University of Toronto researcher Philip Oreopoulos. “The issue is that most students don’t use it that way.”

In the study, Oreopoulos worked with a Tennessee school district to randomly assign low-performing students from 18 middle schools to use Khan Academy during the school day. Khan Academy provides online lessons and practice that students work through at their own speed. Khanmigo is programmed to respond to questions without giving away the answers, though students had to actively seek its help.

The study compared Khan students with another group of students who instead used a combination of other digital math programs and small-group teacher-led instruction.

By year two of the study, the researchers found some promising results. Students using Khan Academy made faster math gains than the comparison group. This suggests that Khan Academy has value — a notable finding at a moment of intense backlash to ed-tech.

But the researchers say the benefits of Khan didn’t seem to come from AI. Most of the Khan Academy middle schoolers simply weren’t engaging with Khanmigo productively or at all.

Students only used Khanmigo about a third of the days they were working in Khan Academy. When interactions did occur, many students just sent off-topic messages or tried to convince Khanmigo to provide the correct answers. “Access was nearly universal but engagement was thin,” the researchers wrote. “It may be that human attention is the key ingredient for realizing the full benefits of personalized learning.”

Here are some examples of students’ interactions with Khanmigo from the new study:

Paraphrased examples of students' conversations with Khanmigo from the study "One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment."

“What this has put in huge spotlight — not that it’s a shock to educators — is how much motivation matters,” said Sal Khan in an interview.

The more AI can mirror a human tutor, the better it might become, Oreopoulos says. Right now, it’s not there. Maybe that’s a good thing: It’s not clear that we would want children to experience an AI chatbot as too human-like.

Since the study period, Khan Academy has redesigned its interface to better integrate Khanmigo and encourage more students to use it. “The AI could not just sit next to the content. It had to be woven into it. We had to make productive struggle harder to sidestep,” Khan wrote recently of the changes. The goal, he says, is not AI for its own sake, but to hopefully drive larger learning gains.

Overall, research on AI in education is nascent, but an early theme is that students often won’t use it for learning. “When given AI tutors, many students do not engage,” concluded a recent summary.

In another study released last week, Oreopoulos and colleagues sought to test a solution to this problem. In the same Tennessee school district, the researchers designed their own online math program. Some students were given access to an AI chatbot to help them work through problems. Students could only move on if they answered the questions correctly. In contrast to Khanmigo, the AI chatbot popped up without student prompting.

The students with access to AI moved less quickly through problems, but were more accurate in their answers. A week later when they were quizzed again on similar problems without access to AI, they were slightly more likely to respond correctly compared with a control group. This is preliminary evidence that in tightly controlled settings students can be coaxed into using AI well.

Of course, the challenge is that students spend most of their time outside of tightly controlled settings, and adolescents by their nature often seek the path of least resistance.

“The same technology that can be used as a good tutor, can also be used to make your life easier. But making your life easier equals less effort, less learning,” said Oreopoulos.

This story has been updated with a comment from Sal Khan.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania still hasn’t passed a school cellphone ban. Some Philly principals aren’t waiting.

2026-08-20T15:03:47+00:00

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At West Philadelphia High School, kids are sometimes on their phones — but they’re not breaking any rules.

The school has a new cellphone policy, implemented last school year, that requires teachers to lock up student phones in a clear cabinet at the front of each classroom. During class, the phones are visible but out of reach. Then, when the bell rings, kids get them back.

That means students can scroll TikTok at lunch and text their parents between classes. During some lessons, teachers can unlock the phones, allowing students to use them for schoolwork.

“We want to be innovators,” said climate manager Eugene Lett Jr. “We want kids to have their phones. But not during instruction time.”

West Philly High’s approach differs from the so-called “bell-to-bell” cellphone bans taking off around the country. In states such as New York and New Jersey, lawmakers now require schools to prohibit student cellphone use throughout the school day, including lunch and transition times. These policies include some exceptions but are largely meant to prevent student cellphone use at school entirely.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro has said he wants lawmakers to pass a similar ban. Proponents say bell-to-bell bans encourage social interaction and help kids focus on learning. But as Pennsylvania lawmakers continue negotiating school cellphone use regulations, some school leaders say they like their own approaches, which a statewide ban could disrupt.

The state Senate passed a bill in February to ban students’ use of cellphones during the school day, and the House passed an amended version in June. The bill includes exceptions for students who need devices for medical use, translation, or communication support. But lawmakers have yet to agree on a final version, as disagreements remain over which schools the ban should apply to and what exceptions it should include.

That means districts are largely on their own to determine how to manage student cellphone use. In Philadelphia, the district leaves cellphone policies and enforcement up to individual schools.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has supported Shapiro’s call for a statewide cellphone ban. But Superintendent Tony Watlington has previously said he believes decisions about student cellphone use are “best made at the school level.”

Philadelphia leaves cellphone policies up to schools

At West Philly High, Principal Marla Travis said the school used to require students to store their phones in locked pouches for the entire day. The goal was to limit distractions and keep students focused on learning. But in practice, she said, it was difficult to implement and made kids and families anxious.

Phones still buzzed even if they were stored away, and some kids found ways to unlock the pouches. The cost of buying new pouches and the staff time needed to unlock them for hundreds of kids at the end of each day also added to the challenge.

So Travis’s team met with students and staff during town halls to discuss what they could improve. Teachers wanted an easier way to manage the end-of-day phone unlocking rush. Students wanted to check their phones a few times throughout the day to communicate with their families.

Travis got the idea for the clear, locked cabinets from an airport charging station. They cost $35 each and are simple to use, she said. A handful of times, students have tried to turn in dummy phones to avoid handing over their real ones. But overall, she said, “they seem to like it, and they abide by the rules.”

West Philadelphia High School Principal Marla Travis says locked cabinets in each classroom help the school limit student cellphone use while still allowing students to use phones between class.

But a mile away, at James Rhoads Elementary School, storing student cellphones in locked pouches has worked well, said Principal Megan Wapner.

The school provides Yondr pouches to all students in grades 3-8. Students lock their phones inside before entering the building in the morning, and staff unlock them at the end of the day.

“We’ve seen engagement tremendously improve,” Wapner said. “We’ve seen our teachers’ ability to teach has completely changed.”

Wapner implemented the Yondr pouches at Rhoads shortly after the pandemic, when she said she saw students frequently distracted by their devices. Teachers struggled to compete with the endless entertainment of YouTube and Instagram. Students would sometimes get in fights based on texts or rumors.

In middle school, “big feelings are happening all the time,” said Rhoads English language arts teacher Rafael Schneider. Being without their phones gives students a kind of “cooldown time,” he said, and keeps them present in class.

James Rhoads Elementary School Climate Manager Lamond Muhammad displays the Yondr pouches the school uses to prevent students from using their phones.

Teachers and leaders at Rhoads say managing phones and unlocking pouches for their 400 students isn’t a strain. But they understand it could be trickier at schools with older kids or more students.

Still, Wapner said she supports a statewide ban. Families and students were initially skeptical of her school’s policy, but pushback is now rare, she said. She said she believes a statewide ban could help other schools get cellphone use under control.

“We have really seen a difference,” she said. “You won’t see them on their phones at all. You won’t see phones in the building, and you will also see kids talking, looking at each other, making new friends.”

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: The case against blanket screen-time limits in schools

2026-08-06T14:20:59+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

It’s a tough time to be an education technology enthusiast.

Ed-tech was once widely touted as key to improving learning, but these days many state officials, school leaders, teachers, and parents want to get students off screens in class.

Richard Culatta, the CEO of ISTE, a nonprofit that convenes and trains educators on using tech, has watched this furor grow with a combination of sympathy and alarm. In his telling, the tech backlash is understandable, but the solutions — blanket restrictions in some cases — are not. Echoing many advocates and companies, Culatta insists that schools not throw the ed-tech baby out with the bathwater. Yet he readily concedes there’s a lot of bathwater.

Incidentally, ISTE recently rebranded from the International Society for Technology in Education to the International Society for Transforming Education. Culatta, who’s led the organization for nearly a decade, says the name shift has been in the works for some time and is not a response to ed-tech’s brand crisis.

I’ve heard a lot recently from skeptics of ed-tech, which is why I wanted to talk to Culatta, who has emerged as a leading defender of the value of tech in schools. I was interested in Culatta’s take on why this backlash happened, how to tell good ed-tech from bad, and what role screens should play in early grades.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo of Richard Culatta

Why do you think there has been such an intense backlash to ed-tech in recent months?

You know, in some ways I’m surprised it’s taken this long. I was watching how we were managing technology in the wake of COVID, and we were not doing it very thoughtfully. When you start handing out devices very quickly without preparing teachers, without carefully selecting the tools, without monitoring them for quality, stuff starts to go off the rails.

The implication is that there has been a lot of bad ed-tech use, right? What does that look like?

People very quickly want to focus on the tools, on the screens, and it just doesn’t line up with what we see. It’s almost entirely about how the technology is used. In some cases, we have kids just clicking next through PowerPoint, and that’s terrible learning. That’s just the equivalent of a worksheet on a screen.

So I think we just need to have a moment where we go back and say ‘we did things wrong.’ Unfortunately, what we’re hearing are far less effective strategies. I mean, our friends in L.A. are doing the worst possible approach to trying to course correct.

[The Los Angeles school board recently approved limits on screen time, set by grade level. For instance, in fourth and fifth grades, students will be limited to 30 minutes per day. Before second grade, devices will generally not be used. School board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin recently explained the rationale behind this shift to me.]

What do you object to about what Los Angeles is doing?

If you have a technology that is not supporting learning, zero minutes should be used. And if you have cases where technology is being used in thoughtful ways, it should have more flexibility. It’s going to mean that all of the energy is spent on clocking and timing as opposed to actually training teachers.

Do you think first graders and kindergartners should be spending any amount of time on screens?

It depends. All technology use should be aligned to student needs and learning goals. The use cases where that makes sense for young students are fewer and far between. Banning rarely is a good strategy.

I saw, ironically, in L.A. a number of years ago, a great example of kindergartners practicing reading. Instead of doing these traditional book reports — that were just painful and boring — they were making videos explaining the words they were using. So lots of vocabulary repetition, lots of good use of words in context. Should it have been done for a very long time? No, but in this case it wasn’t.

I’m old enough to remember when there was incredible hype about the possibility of ed-tech driving substantial learning gains. Was ed-tech oversold?

I don’t think it was oversold. It was oversimplified, and so this idea that you could just put some software in front of a kid with no need for a teacher anymore — I mean, we’d hear stuff like that. What happens is when there are big sweeping statements like ‘oh technology will solve everything’ and then it doesn’t — of course it doesn’t — then people think technology is garbage, and we should ban it.

My colleague did a story recently about the sheer number of sales pitches from tech companies that a school district leader gets. And I’m sure every sales pitch came with, ‘oh we’re curriculum-aligned, we’re evidence-based.’

Why would we ever trust the company selling you the thing to tell you that?

Well, right, but then who do you trust? How do you know?

That is the job of education leaders. That is the job of teachers to know when it’s effective. In fairness, we do need to make it easier for schools to make those decisions. We have something that we’re piloting right now, which is called the EdTech Index. It is a database where we are collecting trusted third-party validations of tools and apps.

Do you think the growth of technology in schools over, say, the last decade has had a net positive effect on students?

In the cases where it’s been used in appropriate ways, the answer is yes. The challenge is that for every two schools that are doing this thoughtfully, there are two schools that are doing it in all the wrong ways. What you end up getting is results that are like, eh, doesn’t really make much of a difference. If you aren’t using it in a way that makes a significant difference, you’re guaranteed that it’s going to be distracting and limiting effective learning.

We have well-intentioned schools and educators, and if your theory is true, so many of them are using tech for ill rather than good — that’s a profound challenge.

Totally. I mean, you’re spot on. A follow-up question that you might ask is, well, even if it does make a difference in some places, just to avoid the risk, let’s just not use technology. And that would be reasonable if we didn’t care about our kids being able to get a job in the global economy.

But is it necessary to introduce those tools in, say, elementary school to prepare kids for a global economy?

100%. It’s not about the tools; it’s about behaviors. The behaviors need to happen over a long time. Being a healthy, contributing member of a digital world — that is a complex skill, just like learning to read and write, play an instrument, or play sports.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Why digital tests are helping keep Chromebooks in classrooms

2026-07-16T20:40:07+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Even some educators skeptical of technology say they can’t go cold turkey on Chromebooks. Why? Because standardized testing is now widely done via computer.

“Third grade is the first year of testing, and we wouldn’t want that to be the first time kids are getting exposed to devices,” Los Angeles school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin told me recently, explaining why the district isn’t banning screens after first grade.

Similarly, Baltimore cut back on tech in early grades, but will continue to provide devices to third graders because of testing, the Banner reported earlier this year. A North Carolina superintendent also said the district must maintain some tech to prepare students for assessments. “But if I had the choice, I’d say bubble sheets please,” Stan Winborne, the superintendent of Granville County Public Schools, told the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, digital testing has had the unintended consequence of promoting tech-powered instruction. This raises a pointed question that more schools and policymakers may soon have to grapple with: Should the mode of testing be driving key instructional decisions?

Scott Marion, a psychometrician at the Center for Assessment, isn’t convinced that there should be a broad tech rollback. But he says it’s concerning when assessment alone is shaping pedagogy. “I don’t like when people do things just for testing purposes,” he says.

Standardized testing has become increasingly digitized over the last couple decades for the same reason many things have: convenience. Instead of massive sheaves of paper shipped to and from schools, tests can be done on devices, which are plentiful these days. Online tests were also promoted as a way to more precisely measure student learning since questions can adapt to student skill level.

A downside, though, is that internet outages and other tech glitches can derail testing, as recently occurred in New York and has repeatedly happened in Tennessee.

Meanwhile, in the last several months, a remarkable backlash to tech in schools has swept the country. Some local school leaders and teachers have cut back on screen time. They’ve been able to move so quickly because there are few school tech mandates — except through testing. The federal government requires math and reading tests in grades three through eight; the format of those tests is set by states. Local leaders don’t control this.

Some research shows online testing can affect how well students perform. “There is a learning curve” to digital testing, says Marion, although he suspects that these days it’s not that steep.

Jared Cooney Horvath — a researcher, consultant, and ed-tech critic — argues that brief practice with online assessment is enough to prepare students. “Just because digital testing is the new norm, it does not follow that schooling needs to be redesigned around this format,” he wrote recently on his blog.

It’s an open question how much tech familiarity students need for such tests, especially in early grades. Regardless, perception appears to be holding some districts back from bigger tech reductions. “We want to limit screen time,” one Texas superintendent told a local news outlet. “We also know that we have to give students the opportunity to learn the skill of using technology, so that they can use it to demonstrate learning.”

States may also have an incentive to keep tech in their classrooms if officials think it can help boost scores on online tests. Although the federal NAEP exams don’t have formal stakes attached, state leaders are eager to use scores to claim success of their policies. In 2018, after NAEP tests went digital, Louisiana’s state chief complained that students there might have seen scores drop because they were unfamiliar with computers. (NAEP officials said then this was carefully accounted for.)

Could states go back to paper-and-pencil tests if they wanted? Sure, though it would add logistical challenges and perhaps costs. Whether it’s worth it depends on what you think of general tech use in the classroom. The evidence at this point is ambiguous and in the eye of the beholder.

But with the ed-tech backlash showing no signs of slowing down, digital testing could become the next target.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

For generations, more schooling meant better jobs. Could generative AI upend that bargain?

2026-06-04T20:45:44+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

For more than a century, American education has been transformed by technology.

Various technological shifts have created the modern “knowledge economy,” in which workers with the most years of formal schooling tend to be the best-paid. Economists refer to this dynamic as the race between education and technology, and it’s why each generation of Americans has remained in school longer than the last. Our current education system has been built around this reality.

Enter generative AI, which is not like the technologies that automated parts of farm or factory work, and might not be like the computer or the internet. Instead, AI threatens to upend a paradigm that has existed for generations, in which the economy adapts to new technologies by demanding more education. In theory, AI could do the opposite by replacing large swaths of white-collar workers. That’s why this moment feels so perilous for students and schools.

To be clear, no one really knows how AI will change the economy. But at this moment of uncertainty it’s worth looking back at the historical interplay between technology, the economy, and schooling. Understanding how technology has already transformed education can help understand how it might do so again and why the onset of the AI era feels so different.

For the last century plus, technology in various forms has laid waste to certain farm, manufacturing, blue-collar, and other middle-income jobs. Instead, demand has grown for highly educated white-collar workers.

During this time, American schools and universities have raced to keep up with technology by expanding access. High school education opened up to most teenagers in the early 20th century. The growth of college education followed in later decades. During this time, the U.S. was far ahead of other countries in making schooling broadly accessible, which helped turn the country into an economic powerhouse.

“Because the American people were the most educated in the world, they were in the best position to invent, be entrepreneurial, and produce goods and services using advanced technologies,” wrote Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, in their classic 2008 book “The Race Between Education and Technology.”

The pressure for a more educated workforce continued apace in the following decades. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton liked to quip, “what you earn depends on what you learn.” This was a neat encapsulation of the new economic order.

In response, politicians of various stripes advanced policies aimed at preparing students for postsecondary education and knowledge-intensive work. Kindergarten classes reduced a focus on play and began emphasizing academic content. Schools were held accountable for test scores and graduation rates. High schools expanded college prep programs. Colleges began recruiting more students who wouldn’t have considered higher education previously.

Graphic shows the average years spent in school for 30-year olds, based on when they were born.

Ironically, during this time, there was little indication that technology itself was dramatically improving teaching and learning. In fact, there’s been a cycle of hype followed by disappointment when the radio, the TV, various “teaching machines,” and the computer fail to revolutionize schooling for the better.

Meanwhile, the economy’s voracious appetite for highly educated workers was not fully sated. For the last half century, Americans’ years of education have increased, but at a slower pace than in prior decades. Meanwhile, the relative wages of college-educated workers rose steadily through the early 2000s. This college wage premium — the advantage those with a degree have over other workers — has stopped growing recently but remains at historically high levels.

This has left a modern economy that is fairly polarized. There are many jobs that only require a high school education — like home health aides, retail clerks, warehouse stockers — but their wages are relatively low. Most well-paid professions typically demand a college degree or more: nurses, doctors, lawyers, college professors, business managers, accountants, and engineers.

This economic and educational revolution of the last several decades has led to vastly increased productivity and has benefited well-credentialed workers and the educational institutions that provide those skills and degrees. But it has not been kind to less-educated Americans and has likely contributed to growing income inequality.

The existential question now is whether generative artificial intelligence will change this economic paradigm. AI can already produce research, writing, and analysis previously assumed to be only doable by well-educated workers. One recent study had both educated and less-educated people complete a workplace-like problem-solving exercise. Without AI, the highly educated group did much better. With AI, that edge shrank substantially. That’s why some commentators prophesy a great “deskilling,” in which many well-paid white-collar workers get replaced by AI.

Education has value beyond its economic return. But if that return erodes, demand for the current offerings of American schooling, especially higher education, would likely decline — potentially leading to unprecedented disruption in an industry that has long assumed a growing customer base.

Yet this is hardly an inevitability. Maybe educated workers will be best able to avail themselves of AI. Or maybe the technology will wipe out some white-collar jobs, but expand and create others. Perhaps AI will mostly supplement rather than replace office work or it will prove less useful than some think.

While some claim that AI has already decimated the job prospects of young college graduates, the weight of the data does not support this narrative.

At this point, then, we simply don’t know how AI will reshape the economy and the jobs available to Americans. This leaves students and educators in the profoundly difficult position of preparing for an economic future that feels more uncertain than ever before.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

In the era of AI, schools want students to think critically. Experts say they need knowledge to do so.

2026-05-28T20:40:02+00:00

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On a recent Tuesday morning, dozens of New York City educators gathered in lower Manhattan to discuss an existential issue facing many schools: “Navigating Critical Thinking and Cognitive Offloading in the Age of AI,” as the session’s title put it.

As the training began, nearly everyone raised their hand when asked if they agreed that “critical thinking is an essential skill that we need to teach our students.” Over the course of the day, the teachers considered how to prompt an AI chatbot to get better responses and assess its accuracy. They discussed the risks that students would outsource their thinking to the technology. And they learned about classroom practices to bolster critical thinking, including peer tutoring, socratic discussions, and live journaling.

The professional development was put on by the National Academy for AI Instruction, a multimillion-dollar initiative launched by the American Federation of Teachers and backed by AI companies Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

I sat in on this training, and many teachers I spoke with said they appreciated its message and strategies. But one important idea was largely missing: that critical thinking is directly connected to the content in math, history, and science classes. This is an essential reality often absent from discussions about how schools should respond to the spread of generative AI.

Indeed, the common refrain that teachers should focus on abstract critical thinking skills, disconnected from content, risks de-emphasizing the very thing — fluency with a broad set of facts — that supports critical thinking.

“Domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in 2020 for the American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers. “Critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge.”

As technology has made knowledge more accessible — through books, Google, and now generative AI — some observers have said that schools should place less of an emphasis on basic facts that are easy to look up. “Education in the 21st century must go beyond imparting knowledge,” says the World Economic Forum. Instead, schools must impart “future-ready skills” like critical thinking and creativity.

This isn’t a new idea. Over a decade ago, a panel of academics at the National Research Council convened to consider how schools could inculcate “deeper learning” and “21st century skills,” the buzzwords of that moment. Tellingly, though, the experts reframed this assignment. “The committee views 21st century skills as dimensions of expertise that are specific to — and intertwined with — knowledge within a particular domain,” their 2012 report concluded.

To be sure, there are some skills — communication, personal organization, teamwork — that are useful in many settings and subjects. And decontextualized facts — say, memorizing the presidents without a sense of their place in history — aren’t sufficient for critical thinking.

Yet to solve math problems, students must know their times tables. To infer the causes of historical events, they need familiarity with dates and historical figures. To read and analyze complex texts, they need a wide vocabulary. To think critically, say cognitive scientists, people need to be able to seamlessly access and synthesize a large number of basic facts.

Students can look up some missing information, but when people turn to external sources too frequently, the brain struggles to keep track of all the new facts at once. Imagine reading a book and pausing every few sentences to search for an unfamiliar word or idea.

There’s not yet good reason to assume any of this will change with AI. The technology can help find new information, but knowledge is still necessary to prompt AI appropriately, to assess the accuracy of its output, and to apply it to specific tasks.

When I spoke with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, she said that knowledge certainly matters but that “what [AI] compels is that kids really have to learn how to think and how to solve problems.” She offered a similar formulation in a major speech earlier this week.

For example, elementary school students should engage in civics by researching a topic and then figuring out how to push local politicians to make change, Weingarten told me. “Maybe there are other issues or other facts within social studies curriculum that are going to have to be dropped,” she said.

Maria Elena Guzman, one of the AFT Academy instructors, said that the role of knowledge was not foregrounded in the training because teachers already know they have to teach their content-focused standards. “It’s a given. This is part of the work that they do every single day,” she said.

But if teachers are not taught explicitly about the connection between knowledge and critical thinking, some may leave with the impression that factual content matters less than it used to, especially since this remains an evergreen take of popular education commentators.

Jessie Roeder, a high school robotics and computer science teacher in New York City, appreciates the AFT’s effort to help members navigate the complexities of using AI. He’s already attended four trainings put on by the Academy. During the critical thinking session, he raised the importance of knowledge for using AI effectively.

“You have to know enough to be able to say, wait a second, this is BS,” he later told me.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

NYC Chancellor Kamar Samuels pledges stronger AI guardrails: ‘We missed the mark’

2026-05-27T21:09:39+00:00

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When New York City officials released draft guidance in March for how schools should use artificial intelligence, it unleashed a torrent of criticism from parents and educators accusing officials of doing too little to curb the technology’s threats to education.

Now Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels is acknowledging that the Education Department didn’t grasp the depth of opposition to AI in schools, and he’s pledging a more aggressive approach to curbing AI use for the youngest kids in the city’s final guidance. Officials originally said they were planning to release a final version of the AI guidance in June, but a spokesperson didn’t say whether that timeline is still in place.

“We missed the mark, and we didn’t communicate in a way that really showed our community that we understood where we were … and that we were worthy of being trusted to protect young people,” Samuels said at an event Tuesday night at Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan, according to a partial recording shared with Chalkbeat.

AI “is the most invasive technology that we’ve seen,” Samuels said. While city officials believe older students will need some exposure to AI, the Education Department is “looking very closely” at restricting its use in school for the youngest students, particularly those ages three to five, the chancellor said.

Samuels’ comments mark a significant change in tone, and indicate that the nation’s largest school system is grappling with — and responding to — the fierce backlash brewing against AI and education technology in school communities in the city and beyond.

Across the five boroughs, parents have flooded public forums to rail against the city’s draft AI guidance, which uses a traffic light framework to delineate the risk levels of different uses of AI in the classroom, mainly by educators. Student AI use — one of the thorniest and highest stakes questions city schools must regulate — got scant attention in the guidance and was listed as a “yellow light” behavior.

Opposition to AI use in city schools has grown more organized in recent months, with several elected officials calling on the Education Department to pause implementation of its AI guidance. A petition for a two-year AI moratorium in city schools has garnered more than 3,000 signatures.

Samuels’ evolving response to AI

Samuels conceded that public sentiment about AI has shifted “rapidly” since he took over as chancellor in January.

Initially, he said, the system’s posture was: “‘AI is here; we need to kind of figure it out.’”

He thought that school communities were fearful of the technology, but over the course of developing the first draft of the AI guidance and hearing feedback from families, he came to realize the prevailing sentiment was anger, “a lack of trust in institutions, a lack of trust in our security mechanisms, and also a lack of trust in or deep skepticism of (education technology) companies.”

Officials gave the public 45 days to submit feedback on the city’s draft AI guidance following its March 24 release. On May 8, the last day officials accepted feedback, the city had received more than 6,000 comments, 48% of which came from educators and 42% from parents, the Education Department’s Director of Digital Learning Initiatives Tara Carrozza told parents at an advocacy meeting in Manhattan’s District 1.

NYC’s approach to AI has swung back and forth

Education leaders across the country have been grappling with similar tensions as they seek to develop AI policies. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, called publicly on Wednesday for a ban on student-facing AI in elementary schools, despite being an early and ongoing booster of AI use for teachers.

Those tensions have played out within the city school system at breathtaking speed, as the Education Department swung between initially banning ChatGPT on school devices and networks to pledging to become a national leader in embracing AI. In the absence of firm citywide policy, many New York City schools have crafted their own policies to regulate student and teacher use, while many others have steered clear of the topic.

Dan Weisberg, the former first deputy chancellor, recently argued that AI can help teachers with the time and labor-intensive task of identifying which students are lagging far behind academically, diagnosing areas where they need support, and designing makeup instruction.

But another former deputy chancellor, Shael Polakow-Suransky, who now serves as president of Bank Street College of Education and appeared at Tuesday’s event with Samuels, offered a cautionary tale about relying on AI to help students struggling with math.

He recounted observing a Bronx classroom where students were working on the concept of translating fractions into decimals on a computerized AI tutor program. Many of the students eventually got to the right answer, he said, but few showed a conceptual understanding of what they were doing, and the teacher was too busy troubleshooting tech issues to spend much time with any of them.

“This was something I fear is going to happen more and more schools in across the country, and in our city,” he said. “That in the interest of providing individualized feedback to students, we are going to take the intellectual work that we expect from teachers and pass it to the AI.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Philly middle schoolers are examining AI — and questioning its impact on their lives

2026-05-08T18:21:54+00:00

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The middle schoolers at Philly’s Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy have a lot of questions about artificial intelligence.

They want to know how the government is using AI and what impact the technology has on the environment. They’re curious about how it’s being used for creativity, and whether it will be with us forever — or if it’s an economic bubble waiting to burst.

The sixth through eighth graders have been researching these topics and grappling with how it makes them feel about themselves, their education, and the world around them. On Friday, they presented their findings to their parents, teachers, and some state and local officials in their school cafeteria. Overall, they said there’s a lot they still don’t know.

Marian Anderson Neighborhood Academy sixth grader Azizah Simmons researched how AI is affecting kids her age.

Sixth grader Azizah Simmons said she’s weighed the pros and cons and she’s pretty confident that AI’s overall effect on our society is negative. If used correctly, Simmons said language models like ChatGPT could help kids her age improve their writing. More often than not, she said students use it to cheat on homework or cut corners on writing assignments.

But it’s the ubiquity of the technology that worries her most.

“You can’t really escape AI,” Simmons said.

Conversations about AI have permeated every aspect of education since the arrival of models like ChatGPT. Familiar debates about cheating have given way to protests about transparency and student surveillance. Marketing pitches from companies promising “transformative” AI tools are now overwhelming superintendents’ inboxes. In Philly, educators are working with students to build their own curriculum to separate truth from AI slop, and confront the bias that can be embedded deep in the internal code.

And students say they feel like they have as much knowledge — or sometimes more — than the adults in their lives.

Sixth graders Thomas Mapp and Tyshaan Anderson’s research project focused on how video game designers use AI for level design, character creation, and visuals. Outside of school, they’ve been using AI to help them code games in Roblox and edit videos.

Anderson said he thinks the technology has helped kids like him experiment with creative fields like game design without needing to know the ins and outs of specific coding languages.

Marian Anderson Principal Nicole Patterson said she’s been inspired by her students’ civic inquiries and has learned a lot from them.

Patterson said she sees her school as a trailblazer in leading challenging conversations about AI. But she cautioned that “this is unfinished work.” She said students will continue their research and keep talking about these issues.

Marian Anderson computer science and technology teacher Trey Smith said the goal of Friday’s event was to help students and parents discuss how AI is now part of society, culture, politics, and everyday life, not just about how AI works.

“We’re all still trying to figure this out together,” Smith said. “For students to be in dialogue, not just with themselves and each other and me, but also with their families and with legislators and with school district officials and professors — I think it’s so important for them to learn together.”

That learning process can be tricky. Simmons said she ends up using AI involuntarily because search engines like Google now frontload AI overviews. That makes it difficult for young users to differentiate between what is a primary source link and what is AI generated.

“You use it without meaning to. It’s everywhere implanted in our lives,” Simmons said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Pennsylvania is getting closer to passing a bell-to-bell cellphone ban

2026-02-05T19:30:30+00:00

This story was originally published by The Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

Legislation that would mandate a universal bell-to-bell cellphone ban in public and private schools across Pennsylvania now heads to the House after getting the nod from senators.

A bipartisan group of senators petitioned their colleagues Wednesday to move the proposal, noting that Gov. Josh Shapiro has already endorsed the idea.

“We are spending nearly $12 billion here in Pennsylvania on K-12 education this year alone, but we’ll be flushing it down the drain if we can’t recapture our students’ attention,” said sponsor Sen. Devlin Robinson. “Our schools are for learning, and our kids need a break from these devices.”

In particular, lawmakers shared concerns about the addictive nature of smartphones and how they disrupt learning in the classroom. Sponsors pointed to numerous studies linking cellphone use with poor mental health and worse academic performance.

Combining a pocket-sized handheld computer with addictive apps creates “the perfect storm … not just for kids, but frankly for adults too,” said Sen. Steven Santarsiero, a cosponsor.

“Kids actually have to be able to pay attention in class, to absorb what’s happening,” said the former teacher. “But more than that … those hours, the minutes between classes and the time spent in recess or in the cafeteria at lunch, that’s time when young people need to be talking to each other. They need to be having those relationships.

“Saying, ‘From bell to bell, you’re not using (a phone),’ is what will enable them to do that,” he added.

Proposed ban includes exceptions for students with disabilities

Some early pushback came from parents, including legislators, worried about contacting their children during an emergency, such as a school shooting.

Santarsiero shared a story from 17 years ago during a 90-minute school lockdown, back when students started using flip phones. As it stretched on, kids texted each other rumors, convinced that a gunman was roaming the halls.

“Kids were understandably becoming hysterical, and it made my job in keeping them calm and quiet much more difficult,” he said. “It turns out that the lockdown happened because there was a burglary a couple blocks away … there was never anyone inside the school who had a gun.”

“From my personal experience, these things are not helpful in those circumstances; they are an impediment,” Santarsiero continued.

In a November hearing, school safety experts echoed the need for students to listen to their teachers and school officials in emergencies — and not be distracted by their cellphone.

The bill does include exceptions for students with individualized learning programs or other medical needs. Teachers can also request to incorporate the devices into a lesson plan with administrative support.

Over three dozen states and Washington, D.C. have enacted statewide phone restrictions for students, including 18 with full-day bans or other comprehensive prohibitions.

Senate Bill 1014 advanced on a 46-1 vote over the opposition of Sen. Dawn Keefer. In a December committee, Keefer hesitated to support a one-size-fits-all approach, noting maturity differences between middle grades and high school, and pushed for schools to adopt their own policies.

Kelly Marsh, a mother of three outside of Pittsburgh, is one of the leaders of parent-led PA Unplugged pushing for the law. She called it the “gold standard,” noting the increasing amount of time students report spending on their phones during the school day.

“Teachers, kids, and parents have been tasked with managing the unmanageable. It’s time to recognize that our current approach isn’t working,” said Marsh. “This type of legislation is an important first step for a much-needed cultural change.”

Cyber charter reform that could save public schools $616M advances with unclear future in Pa. Senate

2025-06-05T18:30:06+00:00

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HARRISBURG — Public school districts in Pennsylvania could save more than $600 million annually under a bill that the state House passed Wednesday to cap the tuition they pay to cyber charters.

The bill is part of a several year effort to boost oversight and cut spending on cyber charter schools. At least some of its concepts have support in both chambers, but the issue has always been complicated by the commonwealth’s tricky education politics.

Democrats, who control the state House, have championed increased spending for poor public schools, while Republicans, who control the state Senate, favor funding alternatives including charter schools, though the issue doesn’t break neatly down party lines.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) reflected that dynamic in a statement Wednesday, saying “certain aspects” of the bill advanced by the state House “could be beneficial.” That includes the measure’s requirements that cyber schools do wellness checks on students and that public districts get proof of residency for students for whom they pay tuition.

But, Pittman added, there needs to be recognition that the proposal would save school districts money, which he believes should count as the legislature giving public schools increased support as required by a 2022 court ruling.

Democrats, meanwhile, are casting this issue as an administrative necessity.

“This bill is the result of repeated and urgent calls to update our commonwealth’s outdated charter school law,” state Rep. Mary Isaacson (D-Philadelphia), the bill sponsor, said on the House floor Wednesday. “This proposal is about fiscal responsibilities and aligning tuition to the actual cost.”

The measure made it through the lower chamber 104-98, with two moderate Republicans voting in favor. It now goes to the state Senate Education Committee. Its chair, Sen. Lynda Schlegel Culver (R-Columbia), said in a statement, “We will thoroughly review the legislation as we do for all bills given to the committee.”

Pennsylvania school districts must pay tuition for any students who live within their borders and opt to attend a charter school. These tuition rates are calculated based on the district’s per-student spending using a formula that has changed little over the past several decades.

Currently, the state uses nearly the same formula to fund online-only cyber charter schools as it does for brick-and-mortar charters, despite the former’s relatively lower overhead costs.

That would change under this bill.

It would instead set a base tuition rate of $8,000 per student. That rate would be increased for students who have extra needs, such as disabilities. This mirrors a proposal that Gov. Josh Shapiro has made in his last two budgets and of which Democrats have long been supportive.

The measure would also make several other changes. A number focus on transparency, such as the wellness checks and residency requirements Pittman cited.

Other provisions include requirements that cyber charters post annual performance assessments online and inform students if they are found to be low performing, as well as an enrollment cap on cyber charters found to be low performing. Cyber charters would also be required to disclose any “entities” helping to finance their capital projects.

Along with the flat tuition rate, there are also other financial components.

By the end of this year, cyber charters would have to pay back a significant portion of their unspent surplus dollars from the 2024-25 fiscal year to the state. That money would go into a state fund for public schools facility improvement projects, and would newly make charter schools eligible for those funds.

The bill would additionally bar cyber charters from accumulating large surpluses in the future. Starting at the end of the next fiscal year — June 2026 — any surplus dollars in excess of 12% of the school’s total expenditures that aren’t earmarked would have to be sent back to public districts.

Plus, it would require that any revenue cyber charters generate via property be paid back to the school districts they receive money from.

According to the bill’s fiscal note, lower cyber charter tuition payments would save districts an aggregate of $616 million, half of what they currently spend. Each district’s specific savings would vary based on how many students they have enrolled in cyber charters.

The shaky bipartisan agreement that Pennsylvania’s cyber charter law needs to be updated didn’t come out of nowhere.

Cyber charter enrollment has risen significantly in recent years — by nearly 57% across the state since 2020, when the pandemic began pushing more families to explore the option. Nearly 60,000 Pennsylvania students now attend cyber charters, which means a growing number of school districts and lawmakers are affected.

A review earlier this year from Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor solidified members’ opinion that something had to change.

DeFoor audited five of the commonwealth’s 14 cyber charters and found that the revenue they were taking in nearly doubled from 2020 to 2023, from $473 million to $898 million, and also that the schools’ financial reserves had increased by nearly 150% in that period. In addition, he found cyber charters had been spending funds on “unusual” things like gift cards and vehicle payments.

Still, division remains. During the floor debate Wednesday, several Republicans slammed the bill as unfair to cyber charter schools.

“We still have some more work to do for our school districts complaining about equal funding. All they ask is to be treated the same, and I’m here to advocate for them,” said state Rep. Craig Williams (R-Chester). “House Bill 1500 doesn’t do that. House Bill 1500 puts us on a path to end cyber charters.”

Cyber charter administrators and advocates are also uniformly against the measure.

Marcus Hite, who heads the Pennsylvania Association of Public Cyber Charter Schools, called the $8,000 tuition cap “arbitrary and unrealistic,” saying in a news release it “doesn’t reflect the real cost of educating students, especially those with disabilities or unique learning needs.”

“Cyber charters are already subject to some of the highest levels of oversight in the education system — audits, performance reviews, and public transparency,” he added. “HB 1500 piles on duplicative and punitive rules.”

In a joint statement, a group of administrators from five cyber charter schools said the bill would lead to closures. Jon Marsh of Philadelphia’s Esperanza Cyber Charter School called it “an attack on some of the most chronically disenfranchised and disadvantaged students in our Commonwealth.”

Public education advocates support the measure. Susan Spicka of Education Voters of PA said it “will save hundreds of millions of tax dollars annually and bring long-overdue accountability and transparency to Pennsylvania’s billion dollar cyber charter industry.”

The issue is heavily lobbied. Last year alone, Commonwealth Charter Academy, the state’s biggest cyber charter, spent $202,500 on education-related lobbying. Other cyber charters typically spend at least tens of thousands of dollars annually. That doesn’t touch the significant dollars that traditional brick-and-mortar charters and their advocates spend on lobbying.

Public schools have their own lobbying presence, too. The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the union that represents teachers, spent nearly $178,000 on lobbying last year.

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Philly teacher embraces AI but treads carefully amid data privacy and bias concerns

2025-03-25T21:43:36+00:00

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When Adrienne Staten’s fellow teachers first started talking about using artificial intelligence tools in their classrooms, Staten was not on board.

“AI was scary to me,” said Staten, who’s been a Philadelphia educator for 27 years. “It was like some ‘I, Robot,’ they’re going to take over the world kind of stuff.”

Staten teaches English at Northeast High School, the city’s largest high school, where many of her students have learning disabilities, are dealing with trauma and mental health challenges, or are learning English. She said she didn’t think incorporating a new technology into her lesson plans would help much.

Then, about three years ago, a colleague wrote Staten a poem using an AI chatbot. That completely blew her mind, she said. From there, Staten decided she had to learn more about generative AI, how it works, how she could use it as a teaching tool, and how to inform students about the pitfalls, biases, and privacy dangers of the emerging technology.

AI companies have made grand promises to teachers and school leaders in recent years: Their product will personalize student learning, automate tedious tasks, and in extreme cases, transform the role of teachers altogether. But experts have also raised ethical concerns about how student data is used (and misused) by AI companies, how students can use AI for cheating and plagiarism, the erosion of critical thinking skills, and the spread of misinformation.

Philly school officials say they’re grappling with these questions, while also asserting that the district is leading the way on AI through a professional development program that begins this year. The district has established detailed guidelines and procedures for using AI that attempts to protect student data privacy. But those policies haven’t stopped the district from rethinking certain tasks, like the way teachers design assessments and judge skills such as writing.

As the technology becomes more advanced and embedded within peoples’ lives, teachers like Staten want more support and guidance about it. That means the district must respond and evolve quickly. They also want to guard against how previous technological innovations affected schools and students.

“Everyone seems to have forgotten all of the lessons learned from the social media era,” said Andrew Paul Speese, deputy chief information security officer for the district. “If this tool is free, you are the product.”

How Philadelphia schools are experimenting with AI

When ChatGPT became popular a few years ago, Staten said, “I think we all as teachers were uncomfortable.” Their first thought was that students would use it to cheat, she said.

But what she found is that some of her students were “petrified of it.”

“They don’t understand how it works. They don’t get the idea that just because it spits something out, it doesn’t mean you have to use it,” she said.

Staten can relate. Her early days of teaching involved a lot of printed paper, textbooks, and handwriting. When the district gave teachers “brand-new, shiny computers,” they sat unused in her classroom. She said she was not a particularly tech-savvy person — until COVID.

Now, every student has a Google Chromebook laptop, and the access to technology has transformed how Staten thinks about lesson planning. Being able to do their own research gives all of her students ownership of the lesson, and it’s changed how they respond to activities, Staten said.

Her students who are English learners have found using AI helps them feel more comfortable with their writing and grammar while also giving Staten an opportunity to talk about tone and voice in their writing.

The AI will “spit something out,” and then it’s a conversation starter with that student to determine “is that really you? Does that sound like you? Do you know what this word means?”

Ultimately, Staten said she wants her students to learn how to use machines as a tool to help them locate their humanity within their own writing.

In general, that’s the sort of attitude the Philly school district wants to cultivate. But the district has also prioritized being very clear about what the policies are for acceptable use of AI that guide that enthusiasm, said Fran Newberg, deputy chief in the district’s office of educational technology.

Since November, the district has been training teachers to work with two approved generative AI tools: Google’s Gemini chatbot (which is available for high school students and staff) and Adobe’s Express Firefly image generator (available for all K-12 students).

Both of those programs are examples of generative AI, which includes any tools that draw on a dataset to create new work, such as large language model chatbots like ChatGPT, or programs that produce images, music, or video.

The district’s guidelines for generative AI provide broad resources for some of the most frequently asked questions about academic integrity, verifying information produced by an AI tool, and some examples of how AI could be used in the classroom.

Above all, the district’s guidelines say educators must require students to disclose their use of AI and use citations where applicable.

Balancing passion with appropriate limits can yield encouraging results. At one district school, Newberg said elementary students wrote detailed descriptions of their own imaginary mythological bird creatures. Then, they drew pictures of what they thought their bird would look like. At the end of the project they plugged their descriptions into Firefly.

She said those students looked on in wonder as their drawings and paragraphs were brought to life.

School leaders worry about student data privacy, safety

The district’s approach to AI policy has provided a foundation for what some experts hope will guide national efforts to use AI in education.

Starting this month and next, the district is rolling out a new professional development program called Pioneering AI in School Systems, or PASS. Developed in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania, PASS provides three tiers of professional development involving AI — one for administrators, one for school leaders, and one for educators.

Michael Golden, vice dean of innovative programs and partnerships at Catalyst @ Penn Graduate School of Education, said by the fall of this year he and his colleagues hope to make PASS available to any school district in the country and across the globe.

“We’re building on the prowess and expertise in Philadelphia to create something that’s scalable and usable in many different contexts,” Golden said.

The district’s enthusiasm for and caution about AI are part of what made Philly an attractive option for the professional development program. But in some ways, the district was pushed to embrace the technology.

Speese, the district’s deputy chief information security officer, said two things happened that forced the district to take AI seriously.

First, in August 2023, an influx of Philadelphia teachers asked for support and information about generative AI just as New York’s school chief made a decision to block ChatGPT citing “negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.”

Then, Microsoft made its AI assistant, called Copilot, a mandatory part of their software.

Philadelphia has been a Google-centric district. But Speese said he knew if Microsoft was mandating AI in its software, he suspected Google would soon follow. If district officials banned AI tools altogether, it could completely cripple student computers, email servers, and other systems. A blanket ban could also push some students and teachers towards untested models, putting themselves and their schools at risk.

“Obviously, even if we tried to block it, people are going to be using it on their mobile phones so how do we enable you to use these tools in a way that makes sense within our environment?” Speese said.

So district officials set about changing contracts to include language about safe data collection, privacy, and data storage.

The contract language stipulates the data a student feeds into the tools and the output those tools generate must be “housed exclusively in the United States,” can’t be sold or shared without permission, and that vendors won’t use the data to train their AI models.

“Parents have a right to feel that we are doing everything we can to protect their children’s digital footprint,” said Newberg, the deputy chief for education technology.

AI companies have run afoul of other state’s laws and other school district’s rules. One whistleblower told Los Angeles school officials that the AI tool their district adopted was misusing student records and left sensitive student information open to potential hackers.

Newberg drew a connection between AI and the reaction to the rise of social media. She said district leaders initially brushed off social media as a tangential development. But then social media started impacting students’ mental health, increased cyberbullying, and broadcast photos and sensitive student data to the world.

“We want our students to start having agency and start being skeptical,” Newberg said. “We were not as smart with social media.”

But new, free, and experimental AI tools pop up every day. It’s hard for guidelines and rules to keep up.

For teachers like Staten, educating her students about the biases embedded in these systems, how to protect their privacy, how to see through misinformation, and recognize when a fact is actually an AI-generated hallucination, is paramount. And that’s what keeps her up at night.

“I just want to know that I gave them all the equipment and tools that they need to be okay out there,” Staten said. “It’s a process. I realize that it’s going to take some time.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia wants to be a national AI in education model

2024-12-10T18:25:27+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district and University of Pennsylvania are preparing to launch an artificial intelligence professional development program for school staff that they hope will serve as a transformative national model.

Beginning in March 2025, the Pioneering AI in School Systems or PASS program will be rolled out to select schools across the district with plans to expand to other regional schools and across the country, according to a joint statement from the Philadelphia school district and Penn’s Graduate School of Education Tuesday.

“Our goal is to leverage AI to foster creativity and critical thinking among students and develop policies to ensure this technology is used effectively and responsibly – while preparing both educators and students for a future where AI and technology will play increasingly central roles,” said Katharine O. Strunk, dean of Penn’s Graduate School of Education in a statement.

Since the arrival of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, educators and school leaders have been grappling with the implications of using the technology in their classrooms. Proponents herald the AI revolution as an inevitable boon that will improve academic progress tracking, save teachers time, and allow for more tutoring and curriculum personalization. According to one survey of 1,020 teachers, by the end of the 2023-2024 school year, some 60% of districts said they planned to train teachers about AI use. Notably, the report found that urban districts like Philadelphia were reportedly the least likely to deliver such training.

But AI skeptics have raised significant concerns about inherent bias, inequity, and inaccurate information embedded within the technology along with questions about where students’ and teachers’ sensitive data is being fed, stored, and handled.

Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington praised the PASS program in his statement Tuesday, saying it will “help advance academic achievement for our students by equipping our educators, school leaders, and district administrators with tools needed to make sure our students graduate college or career-ready.”

According to the press release, the program will have three tiers.

Tier 1 for district administrators: Will focus on strategic planning, governance, and policy development to allow administrators to build “a solid framework for AI integration that aligns with educational standards and goals.”
Tier 2 for school leaders: Will focus on implementing AI tools in schools and aligning the tools with already existing goals for classroom instruction and student support.
Tier 3 for educators: Classroom teachers will get practical training on AI tools to “personalize learning, enhance instruction, and use AI-driven data to monitor student progress and provide timely support.”

The PASS pilot won’t carry any costs for the school district and is being developed in partnership with Penn’s Catalyst education center, according to the joint statement. The program is funded in part by the Philly-based Marrazzo Family Foundation.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.