The percentage of high school students who report using generative AI for schoolwork is growing, increasing from an already high 79% to 84% between January and May of this year, according to surveys conducted by College Board, the nonprofit that manages much of the nation\u2019s standardized tests, including the SAT.<\/p>\n
That means increasing numbers of students are assigning their own homework to AI \u2014 even if it puts learning at peril. AI can solve a math problem and also show the work step by step. It can summarize and analyze a reading passage. It can write an entire essay, in ways increasingly difficult to spot.<\/p>\n
Inglewood high school English teacher Alyssa Bolden learned from one of her students that AI could customize an essay by incorporating the student\u2019s notes from Bolden\u2019s lectures as well as her unique evaluation rubric.<\/p>\n
AI has given her an overpowering reason to consider homework pointless.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not doing it,\u201d she said of students and homework. \u201cThey\u2019re not doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alyssa Bolden, an English teacher at City Honors International Preparatory High School in Inglewood, has students write essays in class by hand to limit their use of AI. She does not assign homework.<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Other teachers, however, continue to assign homework, which introduces a new tension in the learning relationship, said 10th-grader Aaliyah Herron, 15, who is one of Bolden\u2019s students at City Honors International Preparatory High School. In other classes, she finds herself having to prove her innocence given the quality of her work.<\/p>\n
She avoids AI to eliminate any possibility that she could be accused of using it improperly: \u201cMy essays will get marked as AI for no reason \u2014 even though I haven\u2019t used AI for any single paper in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fundamentally, AI complicates a preexisting problem: Often, instructors have put too little thought into homework, said Mollie Galloway, associate professor at the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always been important to think about how to create assignments that are meaningful and deepen learning, and the increasing use of AI makes this more true than ever,\u201d Galloway said.<\/p>\n
The old and new homework debate<\/p>\n
Many educators remain resolutely old-school on homework, with views similar to those of Lance Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the California-based Pacific Research Institute<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cImagine receiving math instruction for just an hour a day,\u201d Izumi said. \u201cCan all math learning stick in a student\u2019s brain in that hour? Without homework, many students will not develop the knowledge base necessary for academic success.\u201d<\/p>\n In Izumi\u2019s view, students aren\u2019t getting enough homework. \u201cBesides skills and knowledge, homework teaches students discipline, organization, time management, responsibility, and accountability.\u201d <\/p>\n Students line up at La Tijera Academy of Excellence in Inglewood.<\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n There is research supporting this view. Multiple studies have found that students who did their homework were more likely to manage tasks and time well.<\/p>\n But Izumi also has raised the alarm<\/a> that pervasive AI use could counteract the benefits of homework by enabling cut-and-paste laziness. <\/p>\n Aaliyah said such concerns are legitimate.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of my classmates, in math … they don\u2019t really care about how they do it. They just want to get it done,\u201d she said. \u201cSo then when they get tested on it\u201d \u2014 without access to AI \u2014 \u201cthey won\u2019t really know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Emilio Torres, Aaliyah\u2019s classmate, said such an experience \u201cmight wake them up for like one lesson, but they easily relapse on AI and do it again, and the cycle just repeats itself.\u201d<\/p>\n He uses AI selectively. He will, for example, ask AI to create study questions for him to research. <\/p>\n \u201cAI is definitely a handy tool to do certain things,\u201d said Emilio, who is 15. \u201cI discipline myself to not rely on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the pre-AI debate centered on the amount of homework \u2014 with many educators settling on 10 minutes a day multiplied by grade level. So, for example, a student in 12th grade could expect to receive 120 minutes per day of homework.<\/p>\n More is not necessarily better, according to Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford\u2019s Graduate School of Education.<\/p>\n \u201cMiddle school students that regularly completed two hours of homework did not perform better in school than those that averaged only one hour,\u201d it concluded in a 2020 review of research<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n