As the Trump administration works to dismantle the Department of Education, the nation’s public school system — which educates roughly 50 million students — faces critical changes. That’s why the U.S. education ecosystem is actively seeking ways to counteract diminished support through avenues like technology and, more specifically, artificial intelligence.
From targeting states that fail to revoke diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to targeting Dept. of Ed efforts related to disabilities and special education, the federal government is vastly reducing, if not eliminating, its education support, which contributes upwards of 13% of a school’s overall funding, according to the most recent data. As the state of schooling in the nation evolves, educators and learners are using AI tools ranging from OpenAI’s ChatGPT to the more education-focused AI and video learning platforms to fill gaps.
“It’s definitely unfortunate, especially for Title I schools,” said Nhon Ma, CEO and co-founder of Numerade, a STEM education platform. Title I school districts receive supplemental financial assistance to accommodate children from low-income families with the goal of providing “all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps by allocating federal funds for education programs and services,” according to the Education Department.
Ma grew up in an immigrant community in Los Angeles, and noted that California has a poverty rate of 18.9% according to the latest Census data. “How do we actually get students out of poverty at the fastest rate? Certainly, education is a big piece of that,” he said. “I think there will be an impact on the poorest communities across the U.S. as a result of this.”
Numerade’s platform has looked to address some of those issues through AI and tutors, providing supplemental education that Title I schools can use for free through a collaborative education partnership. Approximately 60,000 teachers and professors have contributed to creating more than five million short-form videos on the platform, and the platform’s generative AI tutor scales out those instructions by making them accessible via query.
What will actually be cut from schools — which could be programs like tutoring, after-school and special education programs — could make the post-pandemic academic catch-up harder to achieve. Meanwhile, as some students and their families face deportation, survival mode threatens to override academic achievement.
Disrupting the 7-hour school day
Mackenzie Price, co-founder of the tech-enabled 2 Hour Learning protocol and a suite of private schools, as well as host of the Future of Education podcast, argues that the fact that students are already struggling proves something needs to change.
“I don’t think funding is directly correlated to results,” said Price. “The current political administration wants to drive more choice to states and communities. If we really think about personalized learning and what works best for each child, I think that is a reasonable thing to allow families to find a way of education that works best for their kid.”
Price’s private Alpha Schools, which operate across 12 locations in five states, use an AI tutoring system that allows students to complete academic work in two hours so they can spend the rest of their school day working on life skills with teachers and coaches. Students also get a 30-minute one-on-one with their teachers each week.
“An AI tutoring system is amazing because it’s able to meet every student where it’s at. It doesn’t care if a student is white or Black or brown. It doesn’t care if a student is wealthy or poor, or if a student comes in in the 15th percentile or the 80th percentile,” Price said.
AI systems do run the risk of perpetuating human-informed biases, even doubling down on stereotypes in the classroom. Humans create algorithms, meaning these programs don’t exist in a vacuum removed from human problems. However, Price acknowledges that she does seek to provide fair access to her technology beyond the families who can afford the tuition, which runs around $10,000 per year.
“One of the things that I’ve been spending a lot of my time on is getting approval in the public sphere via charters,” she said. Additionally, half of the students at her Brownsville, Texas, school come from a low socioeconomic status and receive a full scholarship. There, a cohort of students jumped from the 31st to 84th percentile in math in just a year.
Helping kids struggling with learning
Jen Russ, a New Jersey public school teacher with 17 years of experience in English language arts from grades 5–12 in general and special education, sees opportunity for AI to be leveraged in the classroom.
“My favorite use of AI so far has been using it to draft essay and narrative exemplars for kids,” said Russ. “I’ll ask ChatGPT, ‘Write me a persuasive essay on a topic in the voice of a typical 5th grader.’ If I want kids to analyze it, I can ask the AI to add specific types of errors.”
While Russ believes there’s potential for AI to reduce certain burdens for teachers, she doesn’t believe it will compensate for reduced funding. For example, she uses a computer program in her classroom, Lexia PowerUp, that uses AI to close individual literacy gaps.
“It does the job about as well as a computer can possibly do. That said, it still relies on a teacher interpreting data and meeting one-to-one with a student.”
In fact, if she hasn’t been able to meet with students and assign time on the program, some get so frustrated that they end up punching screens and smashing keyboards. Others figure out how to game the system and level up without improving their skills. More connection with skilled adults is the key driver for closing education gaps, she said.
“These are kids who struggle to learn, kids for whom standard classroom instruction doesn’t work. Many of them believe they can’t learn. Access to the best materials or software rarely changes that,” she said. “When funding is cut, schools lose staff, and the ones left have more to do. A burned-out teacher can be ineffective at best and damaging at worst. No AI is going to be able to correct that.”
While disruptive, tech-led private education options continue to pop up — whether it’s Price’s Alpha Schools or the online Brilliant Microschools which boasts a maximum of 10 students per digital classroom — the consensus is that students across public and private domains require more care.
And while private schools may have more resources, the simple truth is that not all children can access them. Tooling like Numerade and conversational AI tutor Buddy.ai (which is designed to recognize children’s accented English) help fill gaps. Amid federal divestment, the need for “adults who believe in [students] and can motivate them” on a deeply human level, as Russ said, is not going away.
