"What impact will AI have on the quality of education for our youngest generations in the K-12 public education system?" (Photo by Seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Getty Images)
New Hampshirites are worried about artificial intelligence. Sixty percent use it in their professional lives, while nearly the same number are wary of its impact on the future of the state and society.
Data centers, elections, medical care, and personal relationships are all areas of concern for the typical Granite Stater when it comes to the future of AI. After all, AI has touched almost every corner of life. Well, maybe not weekend antiquing adventures.
From 2025 to 2026, negative sentiment about AI in education grew from 49% to 56% among Granite Staters. This may not appear to be a massive increase among those who are concerned, but what it does represent is that more than half of the people living in the state are concerned about what role AI will have in the education of young minds.
Moreover, what impact will AI have on the quality of education for our youngest generations in the K-12 public education system?
When introduced into a mainstream classroom full of typical learners, with little to no guardrails, AI use results in cognitive offloading. AI does the thinking for the student and leaves him or her in a position where there is no struggle to gain knowledge.
This struggle is not only critical to the science of learning, it is indispensable for building mental resilience and fortitude. The skills students will need to effectively face problems big and small for the remainder of their lives. AI short-circuits this entire process rendering the teaching of critical thinking moot.
This should frighten every taxpayer. The product that they are paying for is not happening when AI is left without boundaries within the classroom. Individual teachers have responded to this by reducing the amount of screen time in class to force students to think in the absence of AI.
However, at the school district level, and across the state, there has been a loud silence about what should be done to confront this challenge to basic learning.
The responses from school districts across the state vary wildly. Some districts have implemented AI ethical use policies and others have adopted state-purchased AI platforms for class use, while some have categorized AI use as solely an academic honesty issue by simply changing the wording of their plagiarism policies.
Various non-state organizations have created off-the-shelf frameworks that school districts can adopt to make the integration of AI more uniform and to address some of its major challenges. The state Department of Education has been slow to enforce one of these frameworks or develop one of its own, leaving each district to fend for itself.
It makes sense that the DOE has not released official guidance about what schools should and should not be doing with AI. This moment represents the most significant change to education since the creation of the public school system. The DOE has proposed revisions to the state’s STEM curriculum to incorporate AI. Unfortunately, this is too narrow of an approach. AI is currently in every subject’s curriculum, welcomed there or not.
Rather than wait for the DOE to release AI implementation guidance, there are a few strategies school districts should leverage to address what the future of AI looks like for their students. These strategies are cost-neutral and do not require school districts to hire more staff or consultants.
Each school district needs to develop a standalone AI mission statement. A direction in which to aim its efforts and a set of practical learning outcomes for student success. This needs to organically come from members of the community, teachers, students, and administrators. These members must also be willing to endure revisions and restatements of this mission due to the ever evolving nature of AI.
Once the mission statement is complete, two committees need to be formed. Though separate, they are not mutually exclusive. They will work to create a portfolio of internal tasks to accomplish and collaborate upon.
The first committee will be the age gating committee. This committee will be assigned the task of assessing the foundational learning skills that must not be interfered with by AI. Research has shown that the use of AI by young minds prohibits the formation of these basic skills. The committee will evaluate when and how to introduce AI to older learners, aiming to build foundational skills and prepare them for emerging technologies in the workplace.
The second committee will be the red team committee. This group will function as the internal stress testers of all AI products that the district decides to adopt for internal or student-facing use. They will be responsible for developing protocols and evaluative criteria to challenge AI products under certain scenarios. Ultimately, this will help school districts understand what students and staff will be potentially exposed to on a daily basis.
These committees go beyond the past practices of web tools permissions and static privacy policies that have not been rewritten since the early 2000s. A time where the internet and technology were quite different. AI is too accessible and too present to be evaluated by these approaches. AI can be accessed as a basic Google search now. School districts need realtime feedback about what students and staff could be encountering while carrying out the learning process.
I am not a Luddite. Under the right circumstances, AI can be the superman public education has been waiting on. What will not help with this potentiality, is waiting around for superman to arrive. School districts are obligated to practically assess the benefits and harms AI presents to their students and communities.
There is a path forward for public education in the world of AI. This path will be uncomfortable and may challenge the basic understanding of what an education should and should not be. The minds of our most vulnerable generations are depending on us to guide them down this path. We must not let them walk alone.
Courtesy of New Hampshire Bulletin
