Though Americans are coming to grips with the impact of artificial intelligence on their lives, there’s still a significant amount of distrust. A 2025 PDK Poll, an annual survey of American attitudes toward the public schools, finds diminishing confidence in AI where it intersects with K-12 education.
Over the past year, the poll found declining support for AI in the classroom across a range of areas, from tutoring and standardized test preparation to homework assignments. The sharpest decline involved lesson plans. In 2024, 62 percent of respondents supported teachers using AI to “review and use” in preparing lesson plans. This year, only 49 percent did.
As for teachers, a recent informal Education Week poll of 700 instructors noted that while many people accept AI use in the classroom experience, others have doubts. One reason for concern is the troubling fact that as long as students have access to their phones, there’s a good chance that homework or another assignment might be AI-generated.
Students, of course, are all in. The earliest adopters and heaviest users of AI chatbots have been middle and high school students. When students aren’t in the classroom on weekends and during the summer months, there’s a noticeable drop in usage of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
State education officials have long lagged behind tech developments, and now they’re playing catchup on establishing guidelines for AI use in K-12 classrooms. The 2025 State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) report finds that AI is the top priority of state education tech leaders. Sixty percent of the education officials surveyed said their states already have professional training efforts focused on AI—but funding remains the biggest obstacle.
More than half the states have issued AI guidelines for teaching and learning. Most of those guidelines are voluntary and provide similar recommendations: Some suggest spending more time teaching students about online safety, while others emphasize professional development for teachers on state-of-the-art technologies. Ohio has the most detailed set of guidelines, which serve as a road map for educators to develop their own AI policies—something every school in the state will have to do next year.
