A new NPR/Ipsos poll of 545 K-12 teachers finds that vast majorities view artificial intelligence as a transformative force for education — one that teachers say requires urgent guidance and poses serious risks to students’ critical thinking.
The poll, conducted and released June 5, found that 74% of teachers believe AI will have bigger implications for education than past innovations such as the internet or personal computers. “We’re in an environment where teachers feel like this is going to fundamentally reshape the future of education moving forward,” said Mallory Newall, a senior vice president at Ipsos. She said teachers have “serious concerns about AI’s impact on how they relate to their students and how students relate to each other.”
More than half of teachers — 54% — said AI makes it harder for students to learn critical thinking skills. Christa Corricelli, a special education teacher at Saugus Middle/High School near Boston, said she worries that students who lack intrinsic motivation to be critical thinkers will see those skills “atrophy over time.” She said too often students use AI as “an answer machine” rather than a tool to deepen their thinking.
Michele Naber, a biology teacher at El Toro High School in Orange County, Calif., said she feels a deep responsibility to teach students to interrogate AI-generated information. “If we stop questioning what it says, we can be led to believe anything,” Naber said. “And that’s what really scares me.”
The survey found that 55% of teachers think AI is mostly a shortcut for students to avoid doing work. Nearly 6 in 10 said AI is eroding the level of trust between students and teachers. Newall called that finding “one of the biggest red flags in the data.”
As a result of AI, about 4 in 10 teachers said they have required more assignments to be done by hand, and an equal share said they have required more assignments done in class. Naber said she stopped offering extra credit for beach cleanups after learning how easy it was for students to create fake images of their participation using AI. “I had to stop doing that because I can’t verify it,” she said. “That was sad.”
Despite the concerns, most teachers support teaching students how to use AI responsibly. Nearly 8 in 10 said schools should teach responsible AI use. “To me, that sends a very clear message that teachers are acknowledging that AI is having humongous implications on education as we know it,” Newall said. “It’s not going away. And so now is the time to act.”
Many teachers are already using the technology themselves. About 6 in 10 teachers reported they have used AI for work-related tasks. A majority of those said it saves them time, though 63% said the time savings amounts to two hours or less per week. Naber said she uses AI to generate multiple-choice questions, a task that she said dropped from about an hour to five minutes. Joann Purcell, a math teacher and instructional coach at Downers Grove North High School in Illinois, said she finds AI useful for professional development activities but does not use it with students, saying it is not reliable enough for generating math problems.
Teachers described more mixed experiences with AI for students with disabilities. Ellie Rodriguez, a special education teacher at Royal Palm Beach Community High School in Florida, said a student on the autism spectrum recently used AI to complete an assignment he otherwise could not have finished. “I praised him,” Rodriguez said, adding that she hoped the experience helped him learn to apply resources like an encyclopedia.
But a majority of teachers said they have received little guidance from their schools on AI. About half of all teachers said their school has offered no AI guidance — or they are unsure what the guidance is. Among teachers at schools that provide AI software, only 35% said their school has a formal policy on teacher use of the technology. Only about 4 in 10 teachers said their school offers professional development related to AI. Corricelli said schools are often slow to adapt. “I think we’re all just kind of trying not to drown with the whole thing,” she said.
Seventy percent of teachers surveyed said they believe the public’s perception of them has worsened. Newall said the combination of AI-driven trust erosion and declining public regard points to educators trying “to navigate some very complex challenges in an environment that is already rife with mistrust.”
Josh Kauffman, a seventh-grade English teacher at Alabama Destinations Career Academy, a virtual public school, said he tries to persuade students that there is value in their own writing. “I tell them I would rather deal with all of your typos and know that they’re yours than to wonder how much you’re standing on other people’s shoulders to do your work for you,” Kauffman said.