Google Put AI in Schools. Test Scores Plummeted.

0:00Can you introduce yourself, please? Yes. I'm Shalani Ramachandran, and I'm an investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal. And as a parent, I feel like you have just been exploding my brain over and over again with your investigations into what's going on with kids and schools this year. Well, thank you. It's been exploding my brain too. And when I think there's something there, it ends up being far crazier than I imagined when I actually talked to a bunch of parents and teachers and clinicians. But yeah, my brain is also exploding. So, what are you going to explode our brains with today? You know, earlier this year, I did a big investigation about how YouTube had kind of taken over the American classroom. And the process just understood in a much broader way how Google had sort of trained the size on children and schools as like a really important critical audience.

1:02Shalani has been reporting about how deeply embedded Google has become in our nation's schools. From pushing the benefits of Chromebooks, to helping make YouTube a cornerstone of lesson plans. And now, as it's really become sort of deeply enmeshed in American education, it has really pushed out its AI tools to children. So how did this aspect of the story, the fact that Google's Gemini AI is now in front of every student in America just about, how did that get on your radar? When did you notice that? Well, it was kind of as I was talking to parents, I kept hearing like, have you noticed that the kids are just plopping all of their answers into the Google search bar and getting AI answers? Because Google search has this AI mode, AI overviews and an AI mode chatbot. As Google has become more ubiquitous in the classroom, its AI, called Gemini, is now everywhere. Google says this is a big advantage for students. That AI has the potential to enhance education, and that introducing students to AI early

2:06is a good way to prepare them for the future. Not everyone is so sure about that. So parents and teachers are really worried that this rollout has helped push many students to become academically and emotionally dependent on AI. And students have talked about it to me, and they've talked about the struggle to come up with the first sentence, struggle to brainstorm and think of an idea, because they're so used to sort of farming out their thinking to AI. Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Monday, October 6th. Coming up on the show, how America's students got hooked on Google's AI.

3:06This episode is presented by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Autofine Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trampaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trampaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trampaya, proper training is required. Trampaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

4:10Facilirgic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trampaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trampayaradio.com In the early 2010s, as schools were looking to bring technology into the classroom, Google had the perfect product to offer them. A lightweight and expensive laptop. Chromebooks were like, this is simple and low-cost and they pushed it out to schools and they said this has the promise of being able to personalize learning. And at this time, also, this was kind of like widely considered to be a good thing by most parents and teachers in schools of like, we got to get technology into the classroom, technology is the future, we need internet access, you know, let's modernize.

5:13That's right. And there was a lot of talk at the time about the homework gap and digital divide and like the kids who are lower income not being able to have access to these devices. So it was seen as a good thing and it was encouraged by regulators, by politicians, all of that. And as that happened, Chromebooks became even more and meshed into schools because the teachers felt that, well, we got to make sure the kids know how to use this thing and are familiar with it. These Chromebooks have become a gateway for young students to rely on all kinds of Google apps for their assignments. They use docs to write their essays, slides for presentations. There's Google Classroom, a platform to share assignments and grades. And then, of course, there's the mother of all Google products, Google Search. Now, all of that has been infused with AI. To learn more about Google's role out of AI, Shalani spoke with more than 60 teachers, school officials, parents, children, and clinicians.

6:14How is Google pitch this to schools? Like how are they justifying that this is a good thing for students in classrooms? Yeah, well, they say that Gemini is an AI study buddy for students and they say that they've made a pedagogically tuned model. And what that basically means is like, instead of giving you the answer, it will take you step by step through it. And it'll ask you questions. And to teachers, Google says stuff like that AI can reduce their workload, can deepen medical cognition for children, inspire active learning. They say it can level the playing field for struggling and special education students because you can personalize lessons. Google co-sponsors of fellowship program for top school officials where they learn about Google technologies with an emphasis on AI and how to implement it in their districts. And the company also has an influencer network of more than 6,000 teachers who can get certified for attending workshops. Google says these programs are meant to help educators reimagine instruction so students can experience learning that is, quote, future ready.

7:17So if you're a student, how ubiquitous is Google's Gemini AI? Where are students encountering it? So the one that's the easiest one to access, we've talked about, it's the Google search bar. So you put something in, you get the AI overviews and access to this AI mode chatbot. So it'll give you an answer and then you can keep talking to it and it'll keep having conversation. Right. Google AI is sort of injecting itself between the user and search. Those blue links are now pushed way down the page. Right. And most people just engage with the AI answers that Google is providing. That's exactly right. And then separately, there's Gemini that's been integrated in Google classroom. You might see the little diamond in your docs. The little Gemini logo. Yeah, the little Gemini thing. Lauren Slides, and as of August, Google rolled out a Gemini companion to the partner districts that had enabled Gemini, rolled it out to all K through 12 kids that's just integrated into those classrooms. They put an AI chatbot essentially into the classroom.

8:19Into the classroom suite, exactly. So and then there's other tools too, there's something called photo math to Google-owned app where kids can upload their math assignments, just screenshots, and they'll just give you the answer. And it'll say it'll step by step, but it gives you the chance. I mean, you don't even have to beat up a nerd to get him to do your homework anymore. Like they, you know, that the olden days, you can just screenshot it. Well, then there's Google lens, which is integrated into Chromebooks. And that's the same thing. Screen shots, whether it's a translation, whether it's a question for an essay, whether it's math, it'll give you the answer. School districts have the power to deactivate Gemini in some places, like inside Google classroom. But other features like the AI overview that shows up at the top of the search page, can't really be shut off unless the school blocks Google altogether. Which means for students, it's now very difficult to avoid AI, even if they know they're not supposed to use it for certain assignments.

9:22One student, Shalani spoke to, is a 15 year old named Richard Scott. He had been pretty good at math, you know, previously. And he had done well. But, you know, eighth grade math was starting to get hard. And it was algebra. And, you know, there was quadratic equations and things like that. And he realized that he could put those questions into the Google search bar on his school laptop. And that essentially acted like an AI chatbot that would spit out the answers. So he started popping in his algebra questions into the search bar to quickly kind of finish off his daily schoolwork. And did Richard know that he is probably not supposed to be relying on it so much? Yeah, I mean, he knew that he wasn't doing the work, but he couldn't resist the temptation. And then he started leaning on it for other classes too. Like he mentioned how when he needed to label the parts of a volcano or write an essay about Edgar Allen posed the raven. He wanted a good hook. He asked the Google search bar and it helped me give an AI answer.

10:26AI made it easy to get through his homework, but then his grades and math, which was a subject he'd previously done well at, suffered a lot. And he got mostly bees in the quarterly marking periods, but got an F on his final. And the impacts of AI went deeper than just a report card. He said, it slowed my thinking down. He said, when I was in a test and I couldn't use AI, it was hard to think. And there are a number of teachers from various districts in the country who kind of echoed that. Like in this past year, when their school districts had sort of open AI policies, I had so many teachers say, I can't tell you how this was like the first year when I saw kids just struggling to like come up with something and struggling to brainstorm or like struggling to like come up with the first sentence. The number of kids just staring blankly has been different than ever in years past. What do we know at this point about what these AI chatbots and the prevalence of them is doing to student academic performance?

11:28So there's a growing body of academic research that shows that student use of these kind of consumer chatbots doesn't help learning. And in fact, can actively hurt it. And then there's test scores which are actually kind of showing it in real time. That's after the break. People disagree about a lot in this country. Taxes, healthcare, education. But wherever you land politically, I think most of us agree on this. Better information leads to better decisions. That's the mission of USAFax to make government data clear and accessible. Because public data should be easy to access, trust, and understand. So we can use it to make informed decisions. Read and sign our open letter to support public data at USAFax.org. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. The right hire can make or

12:30break your company, especially if you're a small business. And relying on luck to find that person isn't really the best strategy. But you know what is using Indeed sponsor jobs. You can use it to boost your job post to make sure it reaches more people with the right talents, certification, location, and more. Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a higher than non-sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Disco to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed here. Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. Hirey now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsor jobs. As more and more schools wrestle with the role of AI, we're getting

13:33a clearer picture of how can impact learning. One data point is a global survey from the organization for economic cooperation and development, or OECD. It looked at TescoRAS from more than 750,000 teenage students in countries around the world. The study showed that in the US, TescoRAS and reading fell 14 points between 2022 and 2025. The survey said there were many factors that could be contributing to this, like the rise of social media and more time spent on screens. But they did have a specific question about students' AI use and they found that the kids who reported using AI for specific schoolwork tasks like drafting texts for writing assignments had science scores on average of 20 points lower than students who said they never used AI. 20 points lower, wow. And that's equivalent to about a euro schooling. And what does the research show about like what is happening to students' brains? Like why is it making them perform worse on tests? Yeah, the biggest takeaways are that students seek shortcuts

14:40precisely at the moment. The work starts to get mentally taxing. At that moment when it's starting to get tough is when the students want to take that AI shortcut. Well, I mean that just seems like common sense also just thinking about like when I was a kid it's like if the schoolwork got tough the option was to not finish it and get it bad grade or like power through and find a way. But now for students there's like this third option which is just ask AI. Exactly. In other words, kids are thinking less. Teachers Shalini spoke with reported this over and over. So teachers have talked about how students takes on like short stories and films kind of wreak of sameness after their district enabled Gemini. Like they all kind of had the same thing to say about the story and they actually didn't delve deeper to kind of understand it. And then another thing is a lot of teachers would tell me about how students would ask Gemini for everything from how to draft a breakup text to asking like how many hours until 2 p.m. at 11 30 when there's like a clock in the classroom and how this teacher in Georgia said they no longer

15:46trust what's going on in their own brain. Another concern some researchers have is that while many students start by asking the chat about their schoolwork that relationship can expand and have a much bigger social and emotional impact on kids. As they sort of talking to AI and sort of say maybe first go to it for your physics homework and you're like oh yeah this thing really helped me. And then you can like complain about your friends to this thing and your parents when they're being annoyed and AI is so psychophantic and like validating and it sort of makes you think oh yeah I am right. Like yeah my parents were really annoying about this thing and yeah my friends do suck when they did that thing. There's this like frictionless relationship with this AI that I can have and it's not going to challenge me is going to make me feel good. Why should I bother with those friends who are being annoying or being mean to me. And I think as that happens there's this emotional dependence that can happen as users whether it's adults or children want to seek out frictionless relationships which is something Google researchers have warned about. They've warned

16:50that these chatty anthropomorphized AI poses particular risks to children and could cause diminished intellectual engagement and social degradation more generally because children kind of struggle to distinguish between AI and human interactions. And I actually heard that from teachers too as I talked to them. How is Google responded to all of this? So Google's main response is that they have created models that encourage critical thinking and have specific protections for users under 18 including your prevent emotional dependence. And they said that their studies show that AI tools paired with teacher led instruction can help students learn more effectively. And they said that you know teachers around the world use their technology every day because it solves real classroom challenges and helps improve learning outcomes. Google also says it continues to update Gemini to provide more mental health support and that it works with academic experts parents and teens to help ensure its models are safe and appropriate. Meanwhile, parents have begun raising

17:56alarms. There are parent groups all over the country that are starting to clamor in school board meetings with their superintendents and talk about you know what are you guys doing about this? Do you have a plan? Is there any evidence that you have that shows these improved learning outcomes? And if there is no evidence can we wait till there is before we put it in front of the kids? And I mean really there isn't any evidence is the truth because this is also new. So all of these tools have been put in front of kids without any really evidence backing that it helps improve learning. Google points to a 2025 trial at funded in Sierra Leone in which it said some students gained over a year's math progress in eight weeks after using Gemini's tutoring mode. There are some caveats there they saw that the strongest students benefited the most and their quote was this is a common pattern in educational technology new tools frequently widened achievement gaps rather than close them. Some school districts that last year were encouraging students to learn to use AI

18:56are starting to reevaluate. In early September New York City banned student AI use for one year in classrooms through eighth grade. Los Angeles is also restricted student access to AI. I think what districts really are wrestling with in school officials is they feel like they need to make their kids their graduates future ready and a lot of the messaging from the tech world and from the Googles of the world is that future ready means they have to be AI native children. That's kind of the central tension these school districts are wrestling with is that if the world is an AI world don't we need to like make sure our kids know it in our versatile and understand what it does and what it doesn't do isn't banning it sort of looking back or instincting our head in the sand. I've heard some people make the argument that we just need to accept that this technology is here and that it can answer questions for you and that the school needs to change around that in the same way that math classes changed after the calculator was invented and we could you know use that instead of long division. Yeah I mean that is definitely an argument that a lot

20:01of district officials and Google executives make and they also talk about Google Maps and GPS like who's memorizing the way to go to places anymore who's memorizing phone numbers. So we are offloading our thinking in many ways to many technologies and that's been something that we've been doing over time. The people on the opposing camp see that as sure of course we can use a tool but first we have to teach the kids how to think and come up with an argument learn how to write learn how to communicate and like in respect all the kind of like skills that come from struggling through an essay or struggling through a math problem like the resilience and sort of things that you don't maybe like think about but that is stuff that you got to teach first before you give them the thing that will tell them all the answers.

21:03That's all for today. Monday, October 5th. The journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Additional reporting in today's episode by Georgia Wells and Molly Reignman. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. This episode is brought to you by Born in Roma fragrances by Valentino Beauty, the iconic fragrance duo. Donna Born in Roma O. Departum is a feminine fragrance featuring juicy black central jasmine, woody cashmurin and warm vanilla. Its masculine counterpart, Wombo Born in Roma O. Departum has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, spicy ginger and mineral salt. Shop at macy's.com.

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