Last week I wrote about AI helping teachers spot struggling students early. Same idea as AI reading mammograms: it flags, a human decides. Uncontroversial, I thought. Then the comments: "Please go away." A demand I "spend time as an educator in a K-12 classroom" (four decades in, actually). And a rebuttal to an argument I never made. Turns out none of them read the post. That's kind of the whole point. 👇

In 1984, Benjamin Bloom proved that 1-on-1 tutoring beats every other education intervention, by a mile: two full standard deviations. The catch? At $1,800 to $4,000 a kid per year, no district could ever afford to give every student one. AI just changed that math. Not by replacing teachers, but by handing them the one thing tutoring actually requires: pattern matching, at a cost schools can pay. So yes, I'll say it: teachers need to use AI. There's no other way we actually get to individualized instruction. Here's the case 👇

I posted a quick follow-up on my post about NYC's new AI policy. I've been digging into how NYC's policy compares to LA Unified's similar moratorium, and one difference stands out. LAUSD's ban targets student devices, teachers keep their AI access. NYC went further and put teachers on the red list too. One practical difference? NYC allows no AI for grading; personalized feedback got swept up right alongside high-stakes calls like promotion and graduation. That's a tragic mistake. Student feedback and promotion decisions are not the same category of risk. Nobody's diploma is on the line because a model helped draft a comment on an essay, but every teacher I've ever talked to would kill for the time to give that kind of feedback to all 150 students instead of just the dozen who caught a spare period. The real driver here isn't feedback specifically, it's that "any decision about a student" got defined broadly enough to swallow it. Blanket caution is easier to defend than a policy that actually distinguishes "helped a kid with fractions" from "decided if they graduate." In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this past weekend, Ravi Gupta writes about AI resistance in schools and wryly notes that "AI tutors don't pay union dues". And he got me thinking about how the teachers unions may have shaped this (perhaps without quite meaning to). LAUSD's contract with UTLA bars AI from replacing bargaining-unit work, but that's a job-protection clause, not an assessment one, so a teacher using AI to help with feedback doesn't trip it. NYSUT pushed for something similar in spirit, AI shouldn't replace a teacher's judgment, but NYC seems to have run with that principle much further, to where AI can't touch a decision at all, human in the loop or not. Same underlying worry, two very different policies. As I noted in the previous post, I do understand the need for caution, but, by preventing teachers from using a tool that will help them help kids, NYC has gone too far. A ban that can't tell fractions from graduation isn't protecting kids, it's protecting itself.

NYC Says Balance. The Policy Says Ban. New York City just released its new policy on AI and screen time in schools, and it's worth digging into what it actually says, because the headline version ("NYC finds the balance on AI in schools") isn't quite what's in the document. Link to full post in comments.

Struggling Freshmen? Have a Fake A and Call It a Day Starting fall 2027, the University of Michigan's largest college will stop putting first-semester grades on freshman transcripts. Students will still earn letter grades, and instructors will still hand out feedback, but externally every course will show up as "pass" or "no credit." The stated reason: To "curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals." I get the intent, I really do, but this fix is pathetically performative. And I write this reluctantly, I'm a Michigan resident, U of M is world-class institution and rightfully a source of real local pride, I've even got family who graduated from there. I really am not looking for a target to take gratuitous shots at, but ... seriously? Link to post in the comments.

Does AI belong in the classroom? Of course it does!