Students will embark on a new school year next week, with NYC public schools reopening on Sept. 10. But with just 10 days to go, the city’s Department of Education (DOE) has yet to address one major classroom issue that has many parents and educators greatly concerned: the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In the 2025-26 school year, the DOE implemented an AI policy that many critics found to be lacking in addressing the technology’s most important impacts on a child’s education.
The DOE policy used a “traffic light framework that spelled out various uses of AI and their risk levels,” as Chalkbeat reported. It left out guidance for how students should use AI, prohibited teachers from using it for assessments and grading, but allowed its use by teachers to create their day-to-day lesson plans.
Parents and educators revolted, and the DOE, guided by Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, implemented a pause on the plan. They set a new deadline for creating and introducing a modified AI policy, but that deadline came and went without any new guidelines in place.
With the clock rapidly ticking toward the start of the new school year, parents, teachers and education advocates at the city’s Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) Aug. 26 meeting demanded action. Some wanted the DOE to bar AI’s usage outright, fearing the impact on the students’ critical thinking and psychological development.
Those concerns are not without merit; a study published by the American Psychological Association on July 1 found that adult workers who had used generative AI in researching and finding answers to their questions also “engaged in less critical thinking when they used it to complete work tasks.” Those tasks included brainstorming new ideas, “learning about new topics, and getting guidance when making a decision.”
While that study focused on AI’s psychological impacts on adults, it serves as a cautionary tale in the education of our children. If schools and educators use AI without proper regulation, it will instill in students a tendency to lean more on AI than their own minds. That will have a devastating impact on their ability to learn and think for themselves, and make important decisions in their lives.
AI is a tool much like a computer or a calculator. Schools have regulated the use of computers and calculators in day-to-day instruction to ensure that children use their brains and develop critical thinking, reading comprehension, creativity, problem-solving, and other vital cognitive skills that the world needs to formulate new ideas and solutions to challenges we face every day.
Because it is a tool, AI must be regulated by NYC public and private schools alike to prevent over-reliance upon it, and deterioration of cognitive skills for current and future generations. The DOE needs to listen to parents and educators and roll out as soon as possible a responsible plan for AI usage in the classroom that informs teachers and students of the best practices for using this incredible tool without undermining the quality of education provided.