No new parent looks at their baby and thinks, “I want my child to be standardized.” Cars, furniture, hardware parts, sure. But not our kids. Yet for more than a century, most kids have been educated in a factory-model school system geared toward standardization. In an effort to educate the masses, earlier generations traded the individualized nature of homeschooling and the one-room schoolhouse for an approach that sorted kids by birth date instead of ability or need and delivered content to the whole group at the same speed, whether or not it was the right content or speed.
The expansion of educational freedom is helping fuel a movement back to a more individualized approach to learning. School choice programs, such as education savings accounts, allow parents to direct a portion of state funding to a variety of educational options. At the same time, some states are working to reduce barriers that make it difficult to create these new entities.
AI could supercharge this shift toward personalized learning by making self-paced, mastery-based content widely—and inexpensively—accessible. In conventional classrooms, this could enable a teacher to support kids of varying abilities instead of having a third of the class ahead of the rest and bored, while another third is falling behind and lost. In many microschools, which often have fewer financial resources than public schools, teachers are using AI to assist multiage groups of kids in a small setting. And homeschooling parents are turning to AI to give their kids access to a wider range of content than they could otherwise manage at home.
Of course, using AI in the classroom isn’t all sunshine and roses. Parents, teachers, school leaders, and policymakers have concerns about accuracy, exposure to inappropriate content, excessive screen time, and kids not learning how to actually do the hard work of learning, thinking, reading, and writing. It’s a complex topic that deserves serious deliberation. And the answers that work for one family may not work for another.
Each day this week on the Cato at Liberty blog, Jennifer Huddleston and I will examine some aspect of AI in education. We’ll look at pros and cons, who should decide how kids interact with AI, and the role of school choice in these decisions.
On Thursday (August 20), we hope you’ll join us for a live conversation in a “space” on X (formerly Twitter) to discuss these issues with a panel of experts. Our guests will be Jake Morabito, senior director of policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council; Shelby Doyle, senior vice president of policy and national partnerships at the National School Choice Awareness Foundation; Jake Tawney, director of curriculum and academic resources at the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education; and Jennifer Wolverton, creator of a tech-friendly microschool and author of a book about AI in education.
It’s hardly worth saying that AI is increasingly affecting most aspects of life. Education is no exception—and is likely to be one of the areas most affected. Whether you’re a bit wary (like me) or more enthusiastic (like Jennifer), it’s here to stay. Staying informed on the upsides and downsides of how AI is transforming education will help parents, teachers, school leaders, and policymakers navigate the rapidly changing world.
