For Lisa Parry, a 12th grade teacher in South Dakota, the students’ essays were getting stale.
Her solution: get the students to turn to ChatGPT — which serves up fresh ideas.
Before her students could decide on what to write for their book report on “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,” Parry told them to ask the AI chatbot to craft a topic about the fast-food industry.
Parry’s class had finished reading the book and she didn’t want to read another essay about the effects of fast food on the human body, a common prompt that her past students had used.
The AI chatbot prompted one student to write about how McDonald’s uses sugar in its food products, which intrigued Parry. To her, that idea was more distinctive than many students’ ideas. She encouraged the student to take the AI chatbot’s suggestion and write about that topic.
Parry is one of about 40% of the nation’s English teachers who have used artificial intelligence in their classrooms, according to the results of a new national survey of more than 12,000 teachers and principals. The 2023-2024 survey was conducted by nonprofit global policy think tank RAND Corporation.
At the same time, recently released federal data shows that fourth and eighth graders’ literacy skills haven’t recovered since before the COVID-19 pandemic and dipped once again on the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress.
What’s going on?Kids’ reading, math skills are worsening, new test scores reveal.
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, recently attributed the declines in part to ways teachers are changing how they teach literacy in the digital age. (Other contributors to the literacy crisis include learning setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic and kids’ loss of joy for reading, she said.)
“This is not just a pandemic story… We know that teachers are not asking as much for essay responses,” Carr said. “Students are also reading on devices. They’re not reading the kind of passages on devices that maybe you and I did years ago.“
The increase of artificial intelligence and technological advances in U.S. classrooms has challenged English teachers to adapt their reading lessons and writing assignments. Some of these educational AI technology products on the market can help kids learn to read and write and improve in some cases, but a chatbot is not as effective as a human teacher — at least for now, said Ying Xu, an assistant professor of artificial intelligence in learning and education at Harvard University.
“There’s this specific language used when talking to AI: It’s very matter of fact. It’s almost like a quiz versus when you see a child interacting with a teacher,” Xu said. “Kids have less language production and … tend to be less socially active when they talk to AI.”
Using AI to teach reading comprehension and writing
English teachers told USA TODAY they use artificial intelligence tools to create homework assignments and quizzes. Others said the technology can take the place of a private tutor for their students, which reduces their workloads.
English teacher Jen Roberts allows students to use artificial intelligence reading and writing tools in her classroom in San Diego, Calif., to aid her own teaching.
The ninth graders who attend her classes at Point Loma High School use MagicSchool and BriskBoost, one AI platform that can generate instant writing feedback and another that can ask students about what they just read.
A better substitute than a private tutor? ‘There’s only one of me with 160 students’
“Would it be better if I could read their writing and give them feedback? Yes,” she said. “But there’s only one of me and with 160 students – 36 at a time – it’s a better substitute for a private tutor.”
Both teachers said they’ve seen students improve their reading and writing skills after they used AI.
ChatGPT in the classroom:Here’s what teachers and students are saying
Parry, from South Dakota, has also encouraged students to revise their essays as they work with ChatGPT, she said.
“If it’s about the writing of the actual paper: Then you cannot have ChatGPT do it,” she said. “It should help you prewrite, revise and edit. The middle belongs to the individual showcasing his or her writing abilities … That’s what kids still have to produce.”
ChatGPT in the classroomHere’s what teachers and students are saying
Is AI ready to teach kids to read and write?
Artificial intelligence is powering several new reading and writing technology products in schools, including Amira Learning, CourseMojo and Khan Academy’s KhanMigo, said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which is a non-partisan research and policy analysis center at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation. These programs say they can help kids grow and improve their English literacy skills.
Most of the AI products on the market can teach kids how to read letters or map out sounds, but they’re not as skilled with teaching oral language comprehension, Xu, the researcher from Harvard, said.
“With literacy, there are two processes: The first is reading the letters and mapping the sounds. The second is oral language comprehension ― as if you’re talking and telling me a story,” she said. “We’re hoping AI will grow to develop a better ability for comprehending oral language.”
Students also talk to humans less during the school day the more they interact with artificial intelligence on their computers or tablets, she said. This decreases oral communication practice in school.
Concerns about AI in classrooms persist
Resistance to artificial intelligence persists among some of the nation’s English teachers. Some have caught students using AI chatbots to write their essays, others are anxious that AI will curb critical thinking in their classrooms and some are threatened the tools could replace their teaching jobs.
Three weeks ago, New Jersey high school English teacher Katie Thomas banned her students from typing their essays on their computers or completing their writing assignments at home.
The turning point for Thomas: she discovered that most of her students used ChatGPT or another AI platform to write their papers for them on a recent assignment. That instance led check for each essay for plagiarism and have several one-on-one conversations with students about why they didn’t do their own work.
“I’m sick of constantly putting things into AI checkers,” Thomas said. “It’s taking away from my planning and their education.”
She said she is worried that her students will be taken advantage of “by employers, landlords or the government” in the future if they don’t know how to write or read critically on their own.
“This generation’s reading levels are atrocious and I think it’s because of the use of these platforms,” Thomas said. “Sometimes ChatGPT is wrong. They are being fed misinformation constantly. I worry we’re going to have a generation that follows AI blindly.”
Parry, from South Dakota, said she’s caught students who turned in AI-written work and challenged them to write in the same way under her supervision.
She issued consequences for plagiarism if they couldn’t replicate the same type of writing in the reproduced version of the essay.
More schools prepare to use AI to teach reading and writing in 2025
Several school districts have been using artificial intelligence and more teachers are gearing up to use AI in 2025, according to interviews with school officials and a database of schools that were early adopters of artificial intelligence in classrooms. The database was compiled and published by nonpartisan research and policy analysis organization Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Teachers at Newark Public Schools are planning to use Khan Academy’s Khanmigo teaching tool for literacy instruction, which claims to help kids with their writing skills, in the future, said Paul Brubaker, a spokesperson for the district.
Debra Petish, the executive director of curriculum and instruction from Northern California’s San Ramon Valley Unified School District, said the district’s English teachers are discussing how artificial intelligence will affect writing instruction.
Parry, who is also a school principal in South Dakota, said she is excited to see how ChatGPT evolves so she can experiment with her students on how to use the technology to improve their writing.
“It’s the new Wild West,” Parry said.
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
