Photo with Kirk Drake
Credit: Kirk Drake
Schools are treating AI primarily as a cheating risk while the skills gap widens. Gallup found teachers using AI weekly save 5.9 hours/week. The WEF estimates 39% of current skills may be outdated by 2030. Kirk Drake argues schools should give teachers approved tools, paid training, and clear privacy rules rather than banning AI, and that assessment should shift from producing answers to evaluating AI output critically.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a future challenge for education. It is already changing how people write, analyze, design, and build. Yet many schools still treat it mainly as a shortcut students might misuse. That response is understandable, but it leaves teachers unsupported and students preparing for a world that is disappearing. That gap is becoming more consequential each school year because postponing practical experience does not preserve the status quo. It simply transfers the learning burden elsewhere.
The primary focus should not be putting a chatbot in every child’s hands. It should be giving educators the time, training, and authority to use AI responsibly. Teachers spend hours preparing lessons, creating materials, grading work, and communicating with families. Those duties matter, but much of the repetitive preparation can be accelerated without surrendering professional judgment.
The potential is already visible. A 2025 Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey found that teachers who used AI at least weekly estimated saving 5.9 hours a week. They reported reinvesting time in individualized lessons, nuanced feedback, and family communication. However, a 2026 follow-up found that only 18% of public K-12 teachers had received formal guidance from administrators on workplace AI use. Schools are allowing adoption to happen without building the support that could make it safer and more useful.
That must change. Districts should give teachers approved tools, paid training, and clear rules covering student privacy, human review, and appropriate uses. AI can draft a worksheet or suggest feedback, but an educator must remain responsible for accuracy, context, and the final decision. The purpose is not to automate teaching. It is to return more of a teacher’s day to teaching.
Once educators have that foundation, AI can help address a limitation schools have long accepted: students with different strengths and gaps often receive the same lesson at the same pace. A teacher cannot realistically analyze years of assignments for every child and continually rebuild dozens of learning plans. With appropriate consent and data protections, AI can help identify patterns, propose targeted practice, and adjust materials. The teacher then decides what fits the student.
This is also an opportunity to reconsider what learning should measure. Memorizing information still has value, and students must develop the ability to write, calculate, and reason independently. But producing an answer cannot remain the highest goal when a machine can generate one instantly. Students need to frame problems, test claims, recognize weak output, connect ideas, and explain why a conclusion deserves trust.
The labor market is reinforcing that urgency. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 employer survey estimated that 39% of workers’ existing skills could change or become outdated by 2030. It also identified AI and big data, technological literacy, creative thinking, curiosity, and lifelong learning among skills gaining importance. Schools do students no favor by shielding them from a tool they will be expected to evaluate and direct.
I saw this during an AI boot camp with my three teenagers. They spent the summer building practical projects, including tools for my work and ideas of their own. The important lesson was not that AI supplied code. It was that they had to decide what to build, break a large problem into parts, examine failed outputs, and keep refining. That cycle made learning immediate and purposeful.
There are real risks. AI can be wrong, biased, or careless with sensitive information. Students can use it to avoid thinking. Those are reasons for supervised practice, not blanket avoidance. A school that bans the technology may prevent classroom use while doing little to teach judgment. A school that integrates it carefully can make verification, disclosure, and accountability part of every assignment.
Parents should not assume schools will adapt on their children’s timetable. They can ask faculty and school boards what AI guidance teachers receive, how students are being prepared to evaluate its output, and where responsible experimentation fits within the curriculum. At home, parents can set clear expectations: children should complete their own work while learning when AI can assist them and when they should challenge its answers. Not every parent can homeschool a child or lead a policy campaign, but every parent can raise the question. Schools may need time to change. Our children do not have time to wait.
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