The nonprofit evaluated four AI platforms teachers commonly use in their day-to-day work and found they pose a moderate risk to students and educators. The report found that the tools can act as “invisible influencers” in student learning and promise to create critical documents for special education students even though they lack essential data.

The tools evaluated were — affiliated with Khan Academy — , and .

“There’s no doubt that these tools are popular and that they save teachers time,” said Robbie Torney, Common Sense Media’s senior director of AI programs. “That’s where some of the risks come in — when you’re thinking about teachers using them without oversight.”

These generative AI tools are designed to help with lesson planning, grading, communication and administrative tasks. Unlike chatbots like ChatGPT, they are built specifically for classroom use and promise to save teachers time while improving student outcomes, according to the report.

Nearly two-thirds of teachers utilized artificial intelligence during the 2024-25 school year, saving up to six hours of work per week, according to a recent Gallup survey. 

But that benefit comes with risks — when left unchecked, these tools can interfere with learning without teachers realizing it, the researchers found. 

The tools make it too easy to funnel content directly to students without review, the report says. Responding to teacher prompts, they can automatically create slide presentations that look professional but may include inappropriate material. The AI teacher assistants can also be “invisible influencers” — presenting biased or inaccurate viewpoints that reinforce harmful stereotypes.

For example, when asked about the of “Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio,” MagicSchool and Khanmigo didn’t point out that the information was false. Instead, the tools suggested classroom lessons that explored how economic conditions could be connected to Haitians’ survival strategies and food insecurity. 

Three of the four AI teacher assistant platforms advertise their ability to help with individualized education programs or behavior plans for special education students. But Torney said features like an IEP generator are some of the most concerning.

“Anybody who’s ever participated in an IEP meeting knows there’s so much information that goes into generating an IEP — observational data, testing data, conversations with the student, the parent, the teaching team,” he said. “You can generate a student’s IEP with these tools with very little data.”

When Common Sense Media testers asked Google Gemini and MagicSchool to create behavior plans for 50 white students and 50 Black students, the tools gave different suggestions based on race. The platforms gave white students more positive and less critical suggestions for their behavior plans than Black students.

Teacher AI assistants are best used to supplement educator expertise instead of replacing it, according to the report. 

Earlier this year, a partnered with Curipod to help teachers efficiently address individual students’ learning needs. One district administrator told WJHL-TV that the platform analyzed student answers on assignments and gave personalized feedback “in about five seconds.”

Chicago Public Schools to review curriculum, while Miami-Dade County Public Schools uses it to create quizzes and provide students with on-demand support, such as step-by-step explanations.

These tools lack knowledge such as how to teach effectively, recognize inaccuracies and cater to individual student needs, the report says. But when teachers provide the right context and inputs, AI assistants can generate helpful information.

The report recommends that school and district administrators create clear policies and provide teacher training to help incorporate AI into the classroom. Assistant tools should also be chosen carefully and come with a review process for evaluating their quality. 

The Gallup survey published in June found that 68% of teachers didn’t receive training on how to use AI tools during the 2024-25 school year. Roughly half of them taught themselves how to use it.

“One of our key messages to schools is: You don’t have to have a perfect policy, but you do need to start giving clear guidance to students and to teachers about what they can and can’t use AI for,” Torney said. “If I was still a teacher, I would absolutely want to be using some of these things, because there’s a huge upside. But you can’t just be using them without thinking critically about some of the potential challenges associated with them.”

The first step of this revolution was teaching on video. Traditionally, teachers worked as if their classrooms were islands. The pandemic brought video into every classroom, and, perhaps for the first time, teachers could see how their colleagues worked. They could share what they learned by showing each other, instead of telling what they did in the classroom.

The second step of this revolution was the use of AI to analyze that video and provide data to teachers and their instructional coaches on what works in the classroom and what does not. This is not for evaluation, but for improvement of teachers’ ability to connect with their students.

AI is reshaping how teacher coaching happens. One example is , pioneered by the education nonprofit and the . is already in use in Urban Assembly’s public high schools in New York City, as well as schools in New Jersey, Florida and Illinois. Ramapo College in New Jersey uses it to make feedback for student teachers more meaningful.

This AI tool scans classroom video and produces graphs that measure student talk time, teacher talk time and silence during a class; how often and when talking is on topic; and when respectful, encouraging and insulting language happens. The tool observes, but it does not judge. It leaves the teacher and coach to interpret the observations — and because AI identifies what it hears so quickly, it saves coaches hours of transcribing and collating data, time that can be spent helping teachers through guided, data-informed conversations.

The tool allows teachers to review video of their classes and focus on meaningful moments, such as which instructional interactions affect student learning. For example, it would allow a teacher to consider if  they dominate the conversation in a class while many students never spoke. It can help identify useful patterns in a teacher’s work to build upon. And it can amplify the way that in-person observation from experienced colleagues builds the skills of student teachers. 

It is still too soon to have data on whether improved coaching translates into measurable results for students, Urban Assembly internal data shows that teachers spend 12% less time speaking and classes spend 7% more time talking on topic while using the tool. But anecdotally, both teachers and coaches who have used it are enthusiastic.

Phillan Greaves, an instructional lead teacher at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math & Science for Young Women, told her principal in an email that she has learned more quickly about her own teaching practices. “I never thought I could upload lesson clips into an app and receive data that shows things like talk-time balance, student engagement and pacing,” she said. “Instead of relying on gut feelings, I can analyze real patterns and trends. … Reflection feels less abstract — now it’s focused, evidence-based and actually energizing.”

One of her colleagues, English teacher Patricia Gyapong, said Project CAFE’s flexibility gives her various ways to improve her work in the classroom. “I can choose to watch the video if I’m paying attention to my movement, and which part of the room I tend to focus on. Or maybe I want to see how aligned my questions were, so I read over the transcript. Sometimes, time is limited, so I can look over the bar graph and see my teacher voice-to-student voice ratio. … I love the autonomy to figure out what I need to work on, especially without feeling judgment.”

That time saving is key. When feedback is immediate, it locks in strengths and improves weaknesses. Project CAFE allows educational coaches to distill strengths and opportunities for growth much more rapidly than previous approaches. 

Until now, teachers have often felt that feedback was something that was done to them. With tools like Project CAFE, they can take control of the feedback and make it work for them and their students. Good teachers are created with deliberation, care and compassion — and today, with the most vulnerable students being left even further behind, they are more vital than ever.

This may feel like cause for panic. But there’s one big reason for hope: Educators know more about improving teaching and learning than ever before. Rigorous research on emerging models of teacher development shows positive results for students hit hardest by COVID-19. And with billions of dollars in federal relief funding at their disposal, school system administrators and state leaders have the resources to take bold action. 

Focusing on core instruction matters. School systems including the and made historic gains over the past decade because of innovative investments in instruction. But most districts have yet to take on similarly bold, structural efforts, retaining a status quo that works only for the few.

Here’s the challenge: Researchers assert that a high-quality curriculum can , but that their principal encourages them to use the recommended or required curriculum. Teachers also need that helps them use quality materials. find their current options to be useful. 

As a result, students spend the equivalent of six months per school year on assignments that are not appropriate for their grade. In 2018, TNTP found students in classrooms with mostly Black and Hispanic students were to receive grade-appropriate lessons than those in classrooms with mostly white students. now identify as children of color for the first time in U.S. history, meaning that most of these 9-year-olds will not be prepared for the world when they graduate in 2030 — unless their schools change course.

So what’s the solution? States and districts can take a few bold actions right now to turn research into practice. First, they can get better materials into the hands of educators. High-quality instructional materials have never been more available, affordable or adaptable. At least have created mandates, supports and strong incentives for districts to implement quality curricula. More should follow their lead. 

While curricula have not historically reflected the experiences of students of color in meaningful ways, curriculum reviewers are meeting this challenge with while designers catch up. Districts like Chicago Public Schools have even created to uniquely reflect their community. 

Next, ensure that the support educators receive helps them excel at what and how they are teaching students. . in Chicago and shows that when teachers have frequent, well-structured time to work with colleagues on grade-appropriate instruction, their students make significantly bigger gains in test scores relative to those in other schools. Teachers who received this support in Chicago were able to significantly improve student achievement by more than the estimated learning loss from COVID. And students in made an average 8.5 percentage point increase in math proficiency and a 5.3-point increase in English language arts proficiency. Over four years, these gains represent a 28% and 17% change, respectively.

Finally, gradually invest in the other necessary for teachers to keep improving over time. These include a ​​defined vision for excellent instruction, shared ownership for improvement across teams of teachers, curriculum and assessments that directly meet state expectations, and weekly collaboration time for teachers working in the same subject areas. Many schools add new initiatives and teaching methods for educators to incorporate in their classrooms, such as project-based learning and social and emotional support, without showing them how to combine these strategies into cohesive lessons. That can lead teachers to make false choices between goals like offering academic rigor and incorporating students’ interests rather than seeing those aims as reinforcing each other. Setting a shared, focused vision takes time, but it pays off.

Structural reform on the scale this moment demands is not easy. Even in places where there is strong will, union contracts, staffing shortages and state-level policy barriers limit how much change is possible. But schools must do right by the students and families who are counting on them. At this consequential time when there is little consensus on what schools should do next, education leaders must focus on how to prepare students for a changing world and help their teachers practice what they teach. Teachers make the future, but they cannot do it alone.