In Donald Trump’s eagerness to leave his mark on the nation’s Capitol, he has launched numerous renovations and new projects. His gaudy ballroom is his heart’s desire, but he also loves his triumphal arch towering over the District.
And then there’s his plan for a “national garden of heroes.”
Present plans include about 250 statues. Here is his list of honorees.
John Thompson, retired teacher and historian, knows that we are at a fork in the road with artificial intelligence: Will it control us or will we control it? The evolution and implementation of AI is driven by corpirations making huge investments and seeking huge profits. The well-being of children is not their uppermost goal.
He writes:
My head has been spinning since I attended the University of Oklahoma’s “Applied A.I. in the Workplace seminar.”
The session began with O.U.’s Dr. Shishir Shah who provided a detailed history of machine learning, starting with the 1940’s. Dr. Shah went into the nuances of the phases of A.I. It culminated in today’s period of “Human Alignment” with its exploding data bases. He says that we’re entering an era where we don’t ask whether machines “think,” but what will A.I. learn next.
In conversations with Dr. Shah, I was especially impressed with his insights into public education, and what we would need to do to prepare students for the 21st century. He also said:
As both Dr. Ali and Dr. Jones indicated, we all have to engage in open and transparent discussions about AI and its uses. This will help improve our understanding of its potential impacts, which then can help shape appropriate guidelines, standards, and policies. Engagement is important.
Then Dr. Kyle Jones, who leads field engineering for “Databricks,” warned that anything you think you know about A.I. changes in 6 months. Dr. Jones described a number of ways that A.I. provides useful results. But, he added that A.I. is making things easier for robots, and then asked, “What about human beings?”
Dr. Jones also questioned the role of corporate profits in rapidly expanding A.I.
Then, Dr. Asim Ali, from Auburn University, explained that private investment in A.I. is dominated by the U.S., but we need international solutions, and more regulations. He focused on the recent history of A.I increasing, declining, and returning to growth as it approaches long-term growth. For instance, he used Anthropic’s “Claude” chatbot for an example of what’s possible, as well as its major shortcomings.
Dr. Ali advocates for engaging conversations about A.I. and its uses; if we are “passive about A.I., the future with AI will not be one we like.”
He also reported on “the low likelihood that we will have [A.I.] Superintelligence anytime soon, but that there’s value in discussing a future with Superintelligence because it challenges us to determine our values when using AI and wrestle with the potential negative outcomes for human society.”
That brings me from the various, nuanced history and possible futures they explained to the more complicated paths towards minimizing the harms of A.I. They offered complex appraisals of multiple paths forward. Perhaps we could refine technocratic skills to program A.I. so it doesn’t turn on humans. Or should we try to launch A.I. so that it then learns how to protect and make a better world for humans?
And, yes, companies want us to use more data, despite the environmental damage that results. But shouldn’t we ask whether our rampant use of digital tools and social media is meaningful enough to justify the harms done by data centers?
And, shouldn’t we do a better job of teaching critical thinking?
So, when I drove home from those sessions, my plan was to first reread my notes and to deepen my understanding of their research. But, the first thing I found in my mailbox was Jill Lepore’s “We, The Robots.”
And Lepore’s opening sentence was a quote from Geoffrey Hinton, a “Nobel Prize-winning godfather of A.I.” “’Unless you can be very sure that it’s not going to kill you when you grow up, you should worry.’”
Lepore asks Daniel Roher, the director of the documentary “The A.I. Doc,” which quotes an A.I. insider who says, “I know people who work on A.I. risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school.”
Roher further explains that the government has “abdicated the regulation of artificial Intelligence, just as it failed to pass any meaningful legislation regarding social media.”
Lepore uses Anthropic’s “Claude’s,” effort to create an A.I. “Constitution” as a “trying” example of the problems with A.I, during a time when President Donald Trump is attacking the American Constitution.
And, she asks whether Anthropic’s efforts are designed to “move toward human participation and democratic governance instead of relying on what appears to be technocratic automatism.”
Lepore recalled reasons for hope when OpenAI formed a “Superalignment team” and President Joe Biden issued an executive order “calling for Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. But “In Trumpworld, this was the equivalent of DEI for computers.”
And that brings me back to the O.U. seminar. I don’t know enough to compare and contrast its experts’ detailed findings on A.I. with those of the experts Jill Lepore drew upon. I heard them as being less pessimistic, emphasizing the long histories of challenges that humans have overcome. But, I believe the biggest difference between them is the tone of their analyses.
For instance, Dr. Jones told me, “There is no single inevitable path that A.I. will follow. As humans we have free will and we get to choose. So, his “response is to engage with this, rather than ignore it and hope for the best. After all, hope is not a strategy.”
Denny Taylor, a distinguished scholar in the teaching of literacy, has done impressive research to identify the origins of the “science of reading.” The roots of this latest fad are deeply entwined in the work of behaviorist Edward Thorndike. She explains how one view of literacy got embedded in the report of the National Reading Panel. Other views, other research was excluded.
She writes:
This Substack post documents how George Bush and the Texas Business Council took control of how children are taught to read through their alignment with Reid Lyon and reading researchers on the Thorndike-Skinner-Engelmann-Carnine, stimulus-response, operant conditioning continuum, and delivered American children to technology companies, owned by hedge funds and private equity firms that capitalize on the profits of adaptive AI technology that constantly evaluates a child’s performance to adjust their instruction in real-time.
The post provides the historic foundations of how the integration of real-time adaptive AI into K-3 reading programs marks a shift from education as a social exchange to a closed-loop feedback system between child and machine. In future Substack posts I will focus on how this dynamic reshapes the learning process into a form of “distributed cognition,” where the boundaries between human and artificial thought – the child and the machine begin to blur.
**
Taylor then goes on to document the relationship between Reid Lyon and George W. Bush in the late 1990s. From 1992 to 2005, Lyon served as the Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. He met up with Texas Governor George W. Bush and persuaded him that he had the key to reading success. Bush became a true believer in Lyon’s ideas and embedded them in No Child Left Behind after he was elected President in 2000.
In 1997, Lyon created the National Reading Panel, whose research leaned strongly towards one side of the “reading wars.”
Taylor narrates a historical account that should interest anyone interested in the origins of the “science of reading.”
She concludes:
The damage to the American public school system is extreme and for children the Science of Reading laws are catastrophic. The state laws that have been passed mandate beginning reading instruction in public schools that is developmentally inappropriate, and children’s health and wellbeing, as well as their academic development are at risk. The digitization of reading instruction exponentially compounds the risks.
For children in crisis in America the situation is dire, and we must respond. There is substantial evidence that between 60%and 70% of children in U.S. public schools have had Adverse Childhood Experiences and many of these children are coping with ongoing toxic stress which is compounded by 45 state lawswhich mandate state approved “Science of Reading” programs and excessive standardized assessments developed by technology companies owned by hedge funds and private equity firms….
The six year forensic analysis has provided extensive evidence that the experimental research studies that form the four cornerstones of the “Science of Reading” have no scientific validity. Of particular concern are the dog-whistles and lies that have been “sold” to policy makers and the public about the National Reading Panel Report, which has no scientific legitimacy. A compelling case can be made for the removal of the NRP Report from all documents that policy makers have used to require by law the fundamentally flawed “evidence-based reading instruction” in U.S. public schools. Such an action would remove the ban on cueing and the requirement of direct instruction in the “five pillars,” and thus, nullify the 45 state laws that mandate the Science of Reading. It would also mean that universities would be able to base reading courses on the peer-reviewed articles and books of reading researchers whose scholarship has been banned, and curriculum decision-making would be returned to teachers, parents, and local school districts.
The Trump administration is suing Smith College–one of the nation’s most elite women’s colleges–for admitting transgender women to its student body, a policy adopted in 2025. Trans women were male at birth,
My own college–also an elite women’s college–asked the student body in 2023 about whether to admit trans women. The final vote was not disclosed but it passed; students appeared to be strongly supportive of the change. When the New York Times wrote about the debate at Wellesley, my classmates and I had our own debate. Like the old fogies we are, we were uncomfortable that our stodgy, traditional alma mater was admitting men who transitioned to become female.
But when I visited the campus, I saw a different reality. The students really don’t care about gender identity. They welcome other students and close ranks around those who are vulnerable. Wellesley is a women’s college; the students welcome others who identify as female. It’s a non-issue.
But it’s not a non-issue to the Trump administration. At every opportunity, it tries to eliminate the very existence of trans people. And that’s why it is now taking legal action against Smith.
The Boston Globe wrote about the new offensive against Smith College:
NORTHAMPTON — For more than a decade, Smith College, one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious all-women schools, has admitted self-identified transgender women, with little public blowback.
But after the election of President Trump to a second term, Smith’s policy inevitably caught the attention of an administration consumed with eliminating any form of diversity practices in higher education. Late Monday, the federal government announced it had opened a civil rights investigation of Smith for its admission of transgender women.
Smith got on the administration’s radar via a conservative watchdog group in 2025, when the college awarded Admiral Rachel L. Levine, a transgender woman and former US assistant secretary for health under President Joe Biden, an honorary degree and invited her to be one of the speakers at the school’s commencement ceremony that May.
At the time, the news “piqued my interest as to what the policies were relative to single-sex admissions and gender identity at the college,” because Smith receives federal funding, said Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of the conservative group, Defending Education.
In June 2025, Perry filed a federal civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education that has since morphed into a government investigation probing whether Smith’s admissions policy violates Title IX, the law prohibiting sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal assistance.
The investigation could have implications for other women’s colleges, including Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, which both admit transgender women.
“Title IX contains a single-sex exception that allows colleges to enroll all-male or all-female student bodies — but the exception applies on the basis of biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity,“ the US Education Department’s Civil Rights office said in a statement Monday.
“An all-girls college that enrolls male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX,” the statement said.
A spokesperson for Smith said the school is aware of the investigation and “fully committed to [Smith’s] institutional mission and values, including compliance with civil rights laws,” but “does not comment on pending government investigations.”
Levine, the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate, is a favorite target of Republicans, drawing particularly intense criticism for her opposition to government-imposed restrictions on transgender care for minors, which she has called a health equity issue. The Trump campaign featured her image in ads attacking Kamala Harris on trans rights issues in the 2024 presidential race.
The Defending Education complaint argues Smith discriminates against “biological women” by admitting students whose assigned sex at birth was male but identify as female, while barring students whose assigned sex at birth was female but identify as male.
The US Department of Education did not respond to a Globe request for more information on Tuesday.
Perry, who served as a high-level official in the Department of Education during the first Trump term, said the investigation should encourage Smith to agree to a resolution with the administration.
“Smith College, obviously, is under no obligation to receive federal funding, but once they do, they have to follow federal civil rights law,” she said. “Smith can’t have its cake and eat it, too, by saying, ‘We’ll give lip service to Title IX, but we will violate the spirit, letter, history, and plain text of Title IX at the same [time].’ ”
If Smith wants to keep its current policies, she added, it can rely on private and state funding instead.
Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center, said the probe is proof the Trump administration is more interested in “focusing on fake problems than addressing the actual issues that women and girls are facing in education.” Patel also argued that admissions to private undergraduate colleges are exempt from Title IX’s requirements.
“The Department of Education’s investigation into Smith College is not civil rights enforcement. It’s the weaponization of Title IX and its protections,” she said.
Within hours of the Trump administration’s announcement of the investigation Monday, colorful chalk messages began to appear all over Smith’s campus: “You belong here,” “We love our trans sisters,” “Trans people belong at Smith.”
The college also alerted the campus community about the investigation via an email that shared mental health and other resources.
“We recognize that this development is very difficult for our community,” wrote Alexandra Keller, dean of the college and vice president for campus life.
Margot Audero, a transgender woman in her senior year at Smith, understands her college’s need to be cautious, but she also wants to hear its leaders speak up.
“This does fundamentally change the calculus,” she said. “Smith no longer has the option of staying out of the spotlight. . . . I do think they have the opportunity to loudly state their values.”
The Smith investigation is part of the White House’s broader campaign against transgender rights. On his first day back in office, Trump pledged to “defend women’s rights” by recognizing sex as immutable and binary — biologically male or female — and ordered federal agencies to “ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.”
The administration has since pursued a raft of antitrans policies, from blocking federal funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors to mandating the removal of transgender personnel from the military. It even changed Levine’s name on her official portrait to her previous name, NPR reported.
The legal and political fight has resurfaced divisions over the difference between sex and gender, along with what it means to be a women’s college today. Both Smith and Wellesley have evolved significantly since first opening their doors around 150 years ago, while Mount Holyoke College, founded in 1837, is the most gender-inclusive of the trio.
Mount Holyoke dubs itself “the leading gender-diverse women’s college” and welcomes everyone but cisgender men (who identify as male, in accordance with their assigned sex at birth). Wellesley admits students who live and consistently identify as women.
Smith currently “considers for admission any applicants who self-identify as women,” including those who are cis, trans, and nonbinary, according to its website. The college changed its admissions policy to include self-identified transgender women in May 2015, amid pushback from some alumnae.
Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a resource for the LGBTQ+ community on campus and beyond, wasn’t surprised by the DOE investigation of Smith.
What is surprising is that “it took this long, quite honestly, given the [Trump] administration’s hatred of trans people,” Beemyn said.
As a nonbinary educator who often speaks publicly about transgender issues at schools across the country, Beemyn is receiving far fewer invitations as colleges keep a low profile to avoid the glare of the Trump administration.
Campuses are “scared to do trans events, to have trans speakers, to demonstrate that they support trans rights . . . because they’re so fearful of being targeted, being singled out, being attacked, maybe having federal funds taken away,” Beemyn said, adding that institutions should be careful, but not invisible in the fight.
Beemyn noted that they’ve also heard from transgender students at UMass Amherst and other schools “who are feeling like they don’t have a lot of support because their administrations are not coming forward and saying, ‘We support you.’ And that makes a difference.”
Last fall after Perry filed her complaint, Smith president Sarah Willie-LeBreton told the Globe she hadn’t heard from the DOE and wasn’t prepared to “offer legitimacy” to it by commenting. “Our admissions policies are firmly within the law,” she said at the time, “and we’re very proud of those policies.”
Now that a federal investigation of Smith has been announced, “The proof will be what Smith decides to do in response: if they capitulate, or if they stand up and say, ‘This is something we value, and we are not going to give into the administration,’ ” Beemyn said.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision eviserated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The far-right 6-member majority struck down Section 2 of the Act, which required states to provide Black voters opportunity to represented. In effect, the ruling rejected Louisiana’s redistricting, which would have created two majority-Black districts.
Most black voters live in urban districts. It does not require a gerrymander to produce a Black-majority district.
To eliminate districts that are not likely to elect a Black candidate does require a gerrymander. The compact urban district must be sliced like a pizza, so that most Black voters are in districts where they are a minority.
That’s what’s happening now in Tennessee and other states that to reduce districts that are currently held by a Democrat, usually a man or woman of color.
Tennessee Republicans wasted no time slicing up Memphis in the expectation that the new districts would never elect a Black candidate.
Tennessee Republicans on Wednesday proposed a congressional map aimed at diluting the state’s lone majority-Black district, a swift response to last week’s Supreme Court ruling that weakened a landmark voting rights law.
The new map slices Memphis, a majority-Black city, and Shelby County into three districts and likely will give Republicans the ability to flip Tennessee’s lone remaining Democratic seat, which includes the city.
Democratic lawmakers, whose opposition means little under a Republican supermajority in the state’s General Assembly, and Black leaders across Tennessee have compared the effort to carve up the Ninth Congressional District to Jim Crow-era voter suppression tactics. They have accused conservatives of a power grab that undermines Black voters in Memphis, who have long favored Democrats.
Republicans, cheered on by President Trump, have rejected those claims. Instead, they have said, they are responding to the Supreme Court ruling, which raised the bar for what constitutes a racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Under the map, Shelby County — which includes Memphis — is split into three districts. One district now runs along the state’s western border before extending down to include part of Williamson County, a suburban county just outside Nashville. Two other districts now share part of Shelby County and more rural, conservative communities in Tennessee.
“The Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be colorblind — the decision indicated states like Tennessee can redistrict based on partisan politics,” Speaker Cameron Sexton said in a statement. “Tennessee’s redistricting will reduce the risk of future legal challenges while promoting sound and strategic conservatism.”
The General Assembly is expected to vote as soon as Thursday.
The Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana congressional map that included two majority-Black districts, arguing that it violated the Constitution by using race as the primary factor in redistricting. The ruling has set off a scramble across Southern states with Republican leadership, all of which have at least one majority-Black district, before the 2026 midterms.
The only Democrat on the board of the FCC (Federal Communications Corporation) wants to know why two of the major sources of news in the U.S.–CBS and CNN–are likely to have major investors from foreign sources.
Status, a first-rate site for coverage of media, describes the situation;
Ellison’s Sovereign Scrutiny: The lone Democrat on the FCC is pushing back on what looks like a fast-tracked blessing for one of the biggest media deals in history.
Commissioner Anna Gomez on Tuesday demanded a rigorous national security review of the foreign money flowing into David Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, a merger that would reshape Hollywood and fuse CBS News with CNN. Paramount recently revealed that 49.5% of the combined company will be owned by foreign investors—including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi—if the deal gets a green light.
► “The American public deserves to know who owns the airwaves that carry their news,” Gomez said. “I am alarmed by what appears to be an effort to rubber stamp a financial structure that places nearly half of one of America’s largest broadcast and media companies into the hands of foreign governments with documented records of press suppression and a troubling willingness to silence journalists.”
The Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center by paying informants to infiltrate extremist groups.
The Justice Department alleges in the criminal case brought last month that the Southern Poverty Law Center — which has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump and other Republicans for labeling right-wing organizations as hate groups — defrauded donors by not informing them of secret payments to hate group members to act as informants.
The Justice Department alleges that SPLC has funneled $3 million to hate groups like the KKK, Unite the Right, and the Aryan Nations. SPLC also listed Moms for Liberty as a hate group, and M4L said that SPLC should be shut down.
One of the specialties of SPLC is compiling a list of hate groups and individuals who spread hate.
As an organization that was created to oppose racial injustice in the South, SPLC became a natural target for the GOP vengeance campaign.
The odd thing about the suit is that SPLC paid infiltrators, not the groups themselves.
This is a brazen assault on a significant civil rights group that has tangled with hate-groups for more than 50 years.
It is also a demonstration of the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department, turning it into a partisan cudgel.
Some large corporations have paused their charitable gifts to SPLC, including a division of Schwab that manages charitable gifts, Fidelity, and vanguard.
It was noted on Twitter that Stephen Miller, Trump’s policy advisor, is in the SPLC list of extremists.
Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is a decorated military veteran and a former astronaut. He recently introduced legislation to roll back Trump’s federal voucher program. The Wall Street Journal denounced Kelly’s proposal, and he responded with this letter to the editor.
He wrote:
Your editorial “Mark Kelly’s Bad Education Choice” (April 18) misses some key facts. We can all agree on one thing: Every parent wants their kid to get a quality education that sets them up to succeed. There’s no better path to the middle class than our public schools. I’m the son of two cops. I went to public schools from kindergarten through the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. That system gave me a shot, and every kid deserves the same, no matter where they grow up. Massive voucher programs threaten that.
Take my state. Arizona’s universal voucher program now costs about $1 billion a year and is growing. In your editorial, you note that’s only 8% of the state’s education budget, but that billion dollars is forcing real tradeoffs in the state budget, like cuts to community colleges and water infrastructure in a state facing a severe drought. Meanwhile, more than half of voucher recipients were already being privately educated. That means in Arizona hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize private tuition for families who were already paying for it.
The federal tax credit your editorial defends isn’t free, either. You acknowledge this reality when you criticize clean energy tax credits. With these education tax credits, the cost could reach as high as $50 billion in lost revenue in a single year. That adds to the federal deficit and will likely largely benefit wealthier Americans’ taxes because the credit is nonrefundable. Likewise, because the scholarships can go to households with up to 300% of the area median income, it will subsidize families who can already afford to spend thousands out of pocket to send their kids to private schools.
And public schools across the country will pay a price. When students leave, funding drops. Schools cut programs and staff, sometimes creating a downward spiral. It’s happening in Arizona now. Then what “choice” does a parent have when their local school closes? I support parents who choose private school or homeschooling for their kids. But if we want better outcomes for everyone—higher scores, higher graduation rates—the answer isn’t to take resources out of public schools, it’s to make them better.
I refuse to accept that in the richest country in the history of the world, only a small percentage of our kids get a good education. We should aim higher. My dream when I was a kid was to become an astronaut. I got to achieve that. Every kid deserves the chance to chase their dream too, and that starts with good public schools.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.)
Rev. Benjamin Cremer is a remarkable pastor, a man of integrity and courage. He was born to a fundamentalist family in Idaho and home-schooled K-12. But as he read the Bible, the stern fundamentalism of his youth faded and was replaced by the teachings of Jesus, most especially His call to care for and protect the neediest.
He wrote recently in his newsletter about the hypocrisy of those in Washington who use the Bible to justify their cruel, greedy actions.
Here are some quotes from his account in X and BlueSky.
“I just can’t imagine wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man and not wanting gun reform for every child in America.”
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“Imagine calling Renee Good and Alex Pretti “domestic terrorists” and calling immigrants “animals” then turning around and telling people they need to “tone down their rhetoric.””
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“It is a broken Christianity that says “God protected him!” when a president survives and “thoughts and prayers” when school kids die.
A god who only protects the powerful and not the vulnerable is an idol”
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“Christians should be the loudest voices advocating confronting climate change, not its biggest deniers.
If we truly believe that God created all things, called it good, and called us to be stewards, then acknowledging and confronting climate change is the only faithful response.”
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“Reading the entire Bible and broadcasting it to the entire nation while actively taking food, healthcare, clean water, clean air, shelter, due process, and basic human dignity away from people is the exact kind of religious hypocrisy Jesus raged against.”
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“No amount of reading the Bible publicly can compensate for a heart that is committed to hate.”
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“One of the biggest lies we Christians have come to believe is that the best and most effective way to address the pressing issues of our time is to gain more control over others rather than become more compassionate towards others.
This is the opposite of the gospel of Jesus.”
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“Paula White comparing the president to Jesus was met with applause.
The Pope calling for peace and ending the war was met with condemnation.
Beware of any Christian movement that measures loyalty to God by loyalty to the president.”
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“Sean Hannity said that he was no longer Catholic in 2019. How many times is he going to leave the Catholic Church?”
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“Notice how Christian nationalists suddenly believe in the separation of church and state when Bishop Mariann Budde asks the president to be merciful, when the Pope asks the president to be peaceful, and when anyone suggests that the government should take better care of the poor.”
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“If our Christianity causes us to defend the president rather than the poor, the powerless, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, and the immigrant, that’s when we know we are following someone other than Jesus.”
I love this man!
Dana Goldstein of The New York Times reached out to students and teachers in schools and colleges to find out how they teach writing in the age of AI.
What she learned was that many teachers are expecting students to write in class, not at home, to ensure that they are not turning in essays written by AI.
For today’s high school and college students, the all-night writing session, hunched over a laptop at home or in a library carrel, is on the way out.
In the era of artificial intelligence, take-home writing assignments have become so difficult to police for integrity that many educators have simply stopped assigning them.
Instead, in a rapid shift, teachers are requiring students to write inside the classroom, where they can be observed. Assignments have changed too, with some educators prompting students to reflect on their personal reactions to what they’ve learned and read — the type of writing that A.I. struggles to credibly produce.
This transformation is happening across the educational landscape, from suburban districts and urban charter schools to community colleges and the Ivy League.
The New York Times heard from nearly 400 college and high school educators who responded to a callout about how generative A.I. is changing writing instruction. Almost all described a deep rethinking of how to teach writing — and whether it still matters, since A.I. has become a better writer than most students (and adults), they said.
Teachers are responding to a widespread challenge. Over the past year, A.I. use has become ubiquitous among American students. Between May and December of 2025, the share of American middle school, high school and college students who reported regularly using A.I. for homework increased from 48 to 62 percent, according to polling from RAND — even as two-thirds of students said the technology harmed critical-thinking skills. A third of the students reported using A.I. to draft or revise writing.
The link is a gift article. Feel free to open and read.
Diane Ravitch's blog 