In the last few months, it seems like the question of what belongs in an American classroom is being driven by engagement metrics more than evidence. A viral video carries as much weight as a peer-reviewed study. A parents' Facebook group moves faster than a research office. 

Yesterday, New York City announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI for every student below high school (a handful of tools, including Brisk, were selected for promising high school pilots). Billed by Mayor Mamdani as the most expansive AI ban in the country, the news generated more pop culture education commentary than anything else in recent memory.

If you read this newsletter, you are likely steeped in education policy or practice (maybe both), and have some familiarity with education technology. And if you’re a regular reader, you know that I am equal parts enthusiastic and skeptical when it comes to edtech, laying much of the blame for today’s backlash on often problematic commercial incentives, marketing practices, and messaging at the feet of vendors themselves. 

But if you’re of the field, what may have struck you about much of this week’s commentary is just how uninformed it is.

Michael Crichton had a name for the feeling: Gell-Mann amnesia. You open the paper to a story on a subject you know deeply and find it riddled with errors. Then you turn the page and read about Iran or the Fed as if the same paper suddenly got things right. Anyone close to education received a heavy dose yesterday. “Influencers” and policymakers who could not tell you the difference between a reading screener and a chatbot confidently explained what "AI in schools" does to children.

In recent weeks, I've tried to unpack what I find so troubling about the discourse.

First, I am frustrated by persistent category conflation. "AI" in education is not a single thing. A literacy screener that listens to a first grader read and flags dyslexia risk earlier than any human can is not the same as Alpha School's use of AI-enabled instruction inside a deliberately holistic school day. The work CodeAI (formerly Code.org) is doing to teach students to understand, question, and direct this technology is not remotely the same as handing a 14-year-old unsupervised access to a generalized chatbot.

We have been here before. Audrey Watters' well-sourced history, “A Brief History of Calculators in the Classroom” documents the 1970s debate as calculators entered classrooms and the decades of resistance that followed when calculators arrived, districts banned them. Then the category got defined, four-function versus graphing and when each belonged, and eventually we required them on the AP exam. 

The good news is that people who actually know this terrain are starting to speak up. Jean-Claude Brizard, who taught, led schools, and ran districts in New York and Chicago before becoming CEO of Digital Promise, called the move a knee-jerk reaction and laid out the stakes for Education Week: affluent kids will learn AI at home regardless; it's poor kids in New York City who will bear the cost of a ban dressed up as protection. Erin Mote made the same case in Forbes in a column that reads like it was written for this moment: "The Prohibition Fallacy: Why Banning Tech Won't Protect Our Kids." Prohibition, she argues, isn't governance. It's the absence of it.

An edtech founder that I admire summed up the push to ban as follows: Edtech has had 30 years to create evidence of efficacy. There isn’t enough. But, we aren't banning edtech. What we are banning are products that fit into an ambiguous “AI” bucket, even when there is evidence for their efficacy. Regardless of their merits, products that have spent decades refusing to do RCTs remain free to operate in classrooms across the country.

My fear is that we’re letting pop culture drive policy, rather than research. Viral clips are not evidence. A press conference isn’t a procurement process. Pressure to respond to parent concerns must be measured against the years of training and professional judgement that our educators, researchers, and administrators are equipped with. We can’t outsource our decisions to a slick vendor pitch any more than we should to a panicked parent’s Instagram post.

If you're a district or state leader trying to hold that line, or an operator with actual efficacy data gathering dust, I want to hear from you. Reply to this note. The next year of NYC's "study period" will be shaped by the people who show up with evidence, and I hope that our readers are among them.

W/A VP and editor of The EdSheet Matt Tower sat down with Arman Jaffer, CEO of Brisk Teaching, to discuss how AI can transform education by improving instructional coherence, providing timely feedback, and reimagining the edtech stack to enhance student learning and teacher productivity.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Treasury published proposed rules that would deny tax-exempt status to private educational institutions with any educational policy, admissions policy, scholarship or loan program, athletic program, or other school-administered or supported program that Treasury or the IRS finds racially discriminatory. This move comes as part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on DEI, which it says promotes unlawful discrimination. Treasury notably clarified that the changes would not prevent religious private schools from selecting students based on religious affiliation, and allows schools to continue to utilize race-neutral criteria (e.g., family income, first-generation status, individual hardship) when awarding admission or scholarships. The proposed rules will now undergo a 60-day public comment period, and are expected to go into effect for taxable years beginning after May 31, 2027.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed lawsuits against Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington over laws that grant some undocumented students eligibility for in-state tuition rates and financial aid based on state residency. The DOJ has now challenged a total of 21 states for these laws, and has successfully blocked five states from enforcing them; the other cases are ongoing. According to the DOJ, these laws violate a federal statute that prohibits states from giving undocumented students access to higher ed benefits based on state residency, if those benefits aren’t also available to out-of-state U.S. citizens. Advocates argue that these policies put higher education within reach for undocumented students, many of whom were brought to the U.S. as children, and can help strengthen states’ economies.

The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s EdRedesign Lab is now accepting applications for its next Cradle-to-Career Partnership Leaders Fellowship cohort. Launched in 2024, the fellowship is a competitive, 18-month program that brings together cross-sector leaders to build out community partnerships to address complex issues for children and families. The fellowship was created in partnership with Partners for Rural Impact, Purpose Built Communities, StriveTogether, and William Julius Wilson Institute at Harlem Children’s Zone.

Check out W/A Jobs, which features 3,451 career opportunities from 327 organizations across the education industry. Hiring? For $250/month or $1,000/year, organizations can post an unlimited number of jobs with no per-job fees.