What Parents Need to Know About AI in the Classroom

At the beginning of each new school year in the United States, teachers often require students and their parents to sign disclosures indicating they understand the rules for each course. New for the 2025-26 academic year, students in many schools may also be agreeing to “responsible use of AI.”

What that looks like in practice, though, varies. Hastily written AI policies emphasize integrity and compliance but leave the specifics to individual instructors. While some experts warn that AI harms critical reasoning skills, parents worry about a widening AI literacy gap between students and their teachers. 

“Kids are racing ahead in their grasp of the technology, and schools are scrambling to catch up,” says Stanford HAI Faculty Affiliate Victor R. Lee, who leads the Stanford Accelerator for Learning’s AI+Education program. “It’s important that parents advocate for their children and help shape these emerging policies.”

Here he offers three steps for parents to get informed and involved: Learn what’s happening in the classroom, connect with school administrators, and talk to your children about the dos and don’ts of using AI.

Step 1: Find out how teachers plan to use AI

AI appears in a wide range of education contexts today, from personalized education and tutoring to immersive learning experiences and grading assistants. Before stepping in, parents should seek to understand how their children’s teachers intend to use the technology. This information may be available on school or district websites, in teacher syllabi, from your student, or through a quick conversation or message to the teacher.

For example, education companies like Duolingo and Khan Academy have created AI-powered tutors to help students learn foreign language, math, and writing concepts through conversational chat interfaces. AI-enhanced virtual experiences provide a hands-on way to learn about historical places and scientific concepts. And new AI tools from companies like Kahoot help students learn through personalized interactive games. Are any of these tools supported and encouraged at your school?

Aside from school-approved educational tools and programs, students are following their natural curiosity and turning to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large language models to assist with researching, drafting, and revising their written work. Some schools are responding in kind with AI detection software that’s supposed to identify AI-generated text but has proved inconsistent in practice, sometimes accusing students of cheating when they have submitted original work. This leads to frustration for students and teachers alike. 

To ease the friction, some educators are turning to AI resources from initiatives like CRAFT, an AI program co-designed by Stanford scholars and high-school teachers. Jointly supported by the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and Stanford HAI, CRAFT maintains a growing collection of free plug-in resources that help students understand and question AI for any subject they are studying. 

Integrating generative AI tools into classroom lessons can be challenging for teachers, who may not have the training to feel confident in these new skills. Citing a February 2025 research article published in Springer Nature, “A cross-sectional look at teacher reactions, worries, and professional development needs related to generative AI in an urban school district,” Lee explains, “Teachers are understandably worried about misinformation and academic integrity, and parents should realize there’s no best practice for deploying AI in educational settings yet. But as schools provide professional learning opportunities, teachers will begin to see how AI can be integrated and aligned with educational standards.”

Step 2: Engage with school leaders

For parents who have concerns about how AI could shape their students’ learning experiences this year, Lee suggests reaching out to school administrators. These five questions can help to start and guide the conversation: 

1. Does the school have an AI policy in place for this academic year? If yes, ask where you can review it. If not, ask whether AI guidelines are in progress.

2. What specific AI tools are approved or prohibited in classrooms this year? Do these vary depending on teacher, class, and assignment?

3. How is the school supporting its teachers in learning about new AI education strategies and resources?

4. What messages would the school want parents to help convey to their kids about AI? 

5. Does your child’s district or school have an AI committee that you could join to share ideas and recommendations?

Step 3: Talk to your children about AI

It’s early days yet for AI in the classroom and too soon to assess its developmental effects accurately. We don’t know whether students will benefit from personalized resources or whether AI technology will harm their ability to reason. For his part, Lee is less worried about a dramatic loss of cognitive abilities due to AI use in school, but he does encourage parents to remind their students that learning is supposed to feel challenging. A bigger concern for families, he says, is not to let AI replace normal human interactions that are critical for social development. “With mobile phones, video games, and social media, we’re getting in the habit of being alone, and AI can further that,” he cautions. 

Ultimately, the best guidance parents can offer their students is through open conversations about when and how to use AI safely and responsibly. That means using AI to support learning and not to bypass assignments, being transparent and honest about one’s use of AI, staying alert to bias, and protecting personal information when using AI tools. “Children see their parents using this technology all the time, but they get in trouble at school for doing the same,” Lee says. “If we model the behavior we want to see in our children and communicate expectations around ethics, we can be on the same team.”