New National Poll Shows Surge in K-12 AI Use: Findings and Takeaways
A new national poll on AI use by teachers, students, and parents reveals increasing adoption in K-12 education. Conducted in May 2024 by Impact Research for the Walton Family Foundation, the survey finds that awareness and regular usage of AI tools like ChatGPT have risen sharply over the past year.
According to the report entitled "AI Chatbots in Schools: Findings from a Poll of K-12 Teachers, Students, Parents, and College Undergraduates", familiarity with ChatGPT jumped from 55% to 79% among teachers and from 37% to 75% among students since early 2023. Nearly half of both teachers (46%) and students (48%) now report using ChatGPT weekly - a 27 percentage point increase for students.
Teachers are harnessing AI to generate ideas for classes (37%), create lesson plans and materials (32%), produce student worksheets and examples (32%), and develop quizzes and tests (31%). The response to AI is mostly positive, with 70% of students and 68% of parents holding favorable views of AI chatbots, especially if they've used the tools directly.
However, the poll also highlights key challenges. Most teachers, students, and parents say their school currently has no AI policy, is not offering enough training to staff, and is not meeting rising student demand for AI skills. This policy vacuum means that teachers and students are often using AI without official guidance or guardrails.
RAND vs Walton findings
In striking ways, the Walton findings stand in contrast to a RAND Corporation study from fall 2023, which characterized teacher AI use as “uncommon”. At that time, just 18% of teachers reported using AI tools regularly, with another 15% having tried them at least once.
Among those who use AI for teaching, according to the RAND report, most were using virtual learning platforms and adaptive learning systems, in addition to AI chatbots. The most common ways that teachers used AI tools were to adapt instructional content to fit the level of their students and to generate materials.
RAND also reported that 27 percent of teachers whose main teaching assignment was English language arts (ELA) or social studies used AI tools or products in their work—a significantly higher share than those with other main teaching assignments, such as general elementary (11 percent) and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (19 percent).
Taken together, the two reports suggest a possible inflection point in K-12 AI adoption, with educator experimentation giving way to more frequent and varied usage.
“Tom’s Take” - Takeaways from the "AI Chatbots in Schools" Report
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The Walton report shows much higher regular usage of AI compared to the findings of the RAND report from 6 months prior. I don't think the big jump in AI usage among teachers in a relatively short period of time is some statistical anomaly or suggests widely different research methods. I think teachers are generally curious about AI and how it can make them more productive and time-efficient.
Schools must develop thoughtful AI policies and supports — NOW — because teachers need help. Administrators are struggling to create comprehensive AI policy and implementation guidelines, or taking a wait-and-see approach, and teachers are largely left on their own to make sense of AI. Teachers see significant time-saving and instructional benefits to AI but lack guidance on effective use.
Some teachers, mostly younger ones, feel confident in their abilities to leverage AI, but AI is a beast to implement really well, and there is a pressing need for direct assistance. The report indicates that experience using AI leads to more positive attitudes about its educational potential. Schools should focus on increasing familiarity through training and piloting.
Teachers still want to control the technology, and students will suffer. "It's for me, not you" continues to be the overriding message from teachers to students. Only a small minority of teachers (25%) agrees that AI should be encouraged for schoolwork, and less than half (43%) agreed that AI should be allowed for schoolwork. It's hard to imagine how students are to learn how to leverage AI effectively if schools are not providing them with guidance. It also demotivates students to engage in a prolonged conversation with AI about a topic, which is likely the best way for a student to gain in-depth understanding of a topic and AI. The "unauthorized" student use of AI indicates to me that students have an appetite for a technology that schools should proactively channel rather than reactively restrict.
The goal of personalized student learning remains a distant one. Sadly, personalized learning for students is not one of the most likely uses of AI by teachers, according to the report. If teachers are not encouraging students to use AI for schoolwork, it's hard to see personalized student learning gaining much traction in the short term. (That's why I found it so ironic that CNBC interviewed Sal Khan – the celebrity champion of AI student personalized learning – to comment extensively on the report.)
The math doesn't add up when it comes to teacher-reported interest in AI grading and feedback. The Walton report indicates that AI grading and reviewing of student work is only the 9th most likely use of ChatGPT, behind such things as writing notes. But teachers are looking for AI grading and feedback tools en masse — just not so much ChatGPT. In March 2024, I looked at web traffic to 20 popular AI-powered services utilized by educators, and the top 4 were AI grading, feedback and plagiarism detection services. They accounted for more than 20 million views. In contrast, the combined monthly visits to the most popular lesson planning/teacher assistant tools amount to roughly 1.6 million. That's a 13-to-1 discrepancy. Teachers are indeed using AI for grading and reviewing (or their admins are doing it for them) and there are plenty of AI tools to choose from.
There's a correlation between teachers' (somewhat) declining enthusiasm for AI and increased student use of AI. The Walton report says teacher enthusiasm for AI declined somewhat from 2023. That seems logical, because in 2024 students are using AI much more regularly and, by their own admission, are using it to complete homework assignments without their teacher's permission. Anecdotally, I've heard from several teachers whose admin departments are dealing with a sharp increase in AI plagiarism issues and who report seeing more AI-produced work from their students. These teachers are frustrated with trying to decipher AI work from student work.
The report provides little insight into what AI teachers are using beyond ChatGPT and how they are using it. ChatGPT is the AI of choice for teachers, yes, but MagicSchool has over 2 million subscribers, and other AI teaching assistants – notably TeachMateAI, SchoolAI, and Brisk Teaching – are seeing increased web traffic. Moreover, the RAND report indicated that many teachers were using AI for text leveling, which would indicate that Twee and Diffit would be popular options.
Which teachers are embracing AI the most and why? The RAND report suggests STEM teachers use it less than English/social studies teachers, but the Walton report sheds little light on this issue. The traffic at Tom's Takes: AI Tools & Views indicates a strong interest in AI on the part of Math teachers. And a 2023 Education Week Research Center study reports that math teachers feel that they should use more math technology—not less. But my high AI for Math Teachers web traffic may be some Google Search ranking aberation and nothing else.
We don't really know how AI is changing teachers' instructional activities, time use, and interactions with students. It would be great to have observational studies and time diaries that could illuminate the impact of AI on teaching practice.
Moving Forward: Balancing Purpose and Caution
As a still-emerging technology, AI requires teacher and student experimentation to unlock its pedagogical potential. Yet unchecked usage risks amplifying biases, hallucinations, misconceptions, and academic dishonesty.
Threading this needle will require a steady commitment to principled innovation: establishing guardrails around student use and ethical AI design; empowering educators to pilot student-centered use cases; and teaching learners of all ages to approach AI as a partner in knowledge creation and transfer, not an oracle or a crutch.
The state of AI in education captured by the Walton Foundation poll is cause for both urgency and optimism. With more powerful AI (think GPT-4o) in the hands of students the next six months will be critical in shaping K-12 AI practices and norms. With strategic support and teacher leadership, this moment of disruption could give way to a future of richer learning. The Walton report show the kids are ready - and there's little time to waste.
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AI is getting very popular among students and teachers, very quickly - CNBC (on Walton report)
Apple Intelligence: every new AI feature coming to the iPhone and Mac - The Verge
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Are Lesson Plans Created by ChatGPT More Effective? An Experimental Study - Research Gate
How Artificial Intelligence Can Catch Up With Pedagogy - Leon Furze
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