Parents are losing trust in artificial intelligence (AI) in schools even as more districts look to adopt the technology.
A recent PDK poll found parents are not comfortable with AI software getting personal information about their children such as grades, and that Americans overall frown upon AI usage for creating lesson plans.
The distrust is a drop from previous years that schools will have to confront both as the Trump administration and the industry look to push AI in schools.
“I think that parents are in a lot of different places with understanding what AI is, how it’s impacting schools or not and how it’s starting to show up uniquely for their own children. And we’re in a really different place this fall than even last fall,” said Bree Dusseault, principal and managing director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
“I do think that this next school year is going to be a year of reckoning with AI,” Dusseault added.
The PDK poll found almost 70 percent of parents do not want their students’ grades and other personal information put into AI software programs, while support for teachers using AI for lesson plans has fallen from 62 percent in 2024 to 49 percent this year.
In 2024, 64 percent of parents supported AI for students practicing standardized test and 65 percent supported the usage for tutoring. In 2025, those numbers dropped to 54 percent and 60 percent, respectively.
“Parents probably had some direct experience and exposure to some of the output of how teachers utilize AI. … If I’m a parent of the student that required special education and I saw an IEP [Individualized Education Program] that had AI-generated content, and if that AI-generated content was not aligned with who my child is, or my child’s needs, that’s going to create a level of skepticism,” said D’Andre Weaver, vice president and chief powerful learning officer at Digital Promise and former superintendent.
Weaver added parents could now be more skeptical if AI-generated assignments last year were brought home that were not rigorous or were themselves easy to complete with AI.
“I think what people saw was like version 0.001 of what this tool could be used for … but what we know about these technologies and what we know about educators is that every year there’s going to be refinement,” he said.
Schools, meanwhile, are barreling ahead. Many that had originally banned AI platforms such as ChatGPT in classrooms are now putting teachers in training programs to learn about the technology.
President Trump signed an executive order in April to foster AI usage among America’s youth, and first lady Melania Trump launched a presidential AI challenge for students in schools.
“The Presidential AI Challenge will be the first step in preparing our next generation with a base understanding of this important new technology,” she said in a video.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has also sent guidance to K-12 schools for grants that can be used to integrate AI into instructional material creation, tutoring, career and college guidance and teacher preparation.
Experts say schools need to work with parents on implementation of AI to make them more comfortable with the technology and their students using it.
“Where we hear parents get frustrated is when you know they’re told, ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’ and it’s a one-way dialogue,” said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology at the Center for Democracy & Technology.
“Just being a lot more transparent around the ways that AI are currently being used, that would be an important step for schools to take to facilitate that type of data,” she added. “Start by one, doing their own inventory to make sure they have a comprehensive list of how it’s being used. And then two, take the step to make that information publicly and easily accessible to anyone who’s interested, including parents whose students are in their school.”
Schools also have plenty of their own problems to address with AI, such as equity concerns, privacy worries, AI bullying and students using AI in unwise ways such as turning to the technology to diagnose mental health issues.
“When working with school systems across the country, we work to create spaces where communities — parents, students, teachers — can be a part of this change. Through a series of engagements, we’re pairing AI Literacy with genuine listening and working to understand families’ concerns so they feel that schools are equipped to support their children’s AI readiness. Our belief is that the more parents and educators can come together around this issue, the better prepared the next generation will be to thrive in an AI-driven world,” said Alex Kotran, co-founder and CEO of the AI Education Project.
