What NYC’s AI Ban in Schools Means For Your Child’s Learning: A NYC Teacher Explains
The scratch of a pencil on copy paper stops when I flip to Javi’s personal narrative draft last week, in my Brooklyn 4th grade classroom. The story about his grandmother moving from the Bronx to live with his family is smooth, vivid, and nothing like the half-page scribbled drafts he usually turns in. I glance up at him, where he’s twisting the frayed rubber bracelet from his rec soccer team by the pencil sharpener, and call him over. “This is beautiful,” I say. “Did you use ChatGPT to help with this?” He flinches, then nods so fast his curly bangs fall in his eyes. “My mom said it was okay. I get tired writing and my hand hurts, and I just wanted to get all the stuff about abuela’s arepas down before I forgot it.”
Last spring, NYC’s Department of Education enacted a full ban on artificial intelligence tools on all school devices and networks. The ban was designed to cut down on cheating and protect student privacy, two concerns I don’t disagree with. But what no one has spelled out for teachers or parents is what to do when kids use these tools at home, how to tell the difference between cheating and accessibility, and how to adjust to this new tech landscape when official policy is still playing catch-up.
Last month, I got an email from a mom of one of my 5th grade students who works overnight at a hospital in lower Manhattan. She asked if it was okay if her son used AI to walk him through his math homework when she wasn’t awake to help—she hadn’t done algebra in 20 years anyway, she wrote. Another student, Mia, who has dyslexia, told me the free AI tool she uses to read her social studies textbook out loud is way faster and more accurate than the clunky old screen reader the school provides, but now she can’t use it on her school laptop, so she has to bring her personal tablet from home just to get through assignments. No one has told us what to do about any of this.
A few months into the school year, I’ve landed on a small set of rules that works for my classroom, and I’ve shared them with parents at back-to-school night. The first is the three sentence rule: before any AI can touch your assignment, you have to write three full sentences of your own original idea down, on paper, first. If you’re stuck on how to start an essay, you can’t ask AI to write the whole intro for you—but you can write your three sentences, then ask it to help you fix spelling or brainstorm what to write next. For kids like Javi, who struggle with dysgraphia, that means they don’t have to waste all their energy just getting words on the page, and they still get to practice coming up with their own ideas.
For parents who are worried their kid is using AI to cheat instead of learn, the biggest change I tell them to make is swapping one question for another. Instead of asking “did you use AI to do this homework?” ask “can you walk me through how you came up with this answer?” It takes 30 extra seconds, and it tells you way more. If your kid can explain their idea, the fact that AI fixed their typos doesn’t mean they didn’t learn anything. If they can’t explain it, that’s when you know you need to talk about doing more work on your own first.
If you have a kid in NYC public schools and they have an IEP or 504 plan for learning differences, pull your next team meeting and ask if AI can be added as a formal accommodation. A lot of districts haven’t updated their accommodation lists yet, but formal approval means your kid can use the tools they need to keep up, even if the general school ban blocks it on campus. I’ve had three parents do this already this year, and all three got approved, because it’s clear the tool is just leveling the playing field for kids who struggle with reading or writing.
I get why the ban happened. Student data is a real issue—too many AI tools sell user information, and we don’t know how that data will be used down the line. Cheating is also real: I’ve had a few kids turn in full essays written entirely by AI that they couldn’t explain at all, and that’s still a problem we have to address. But a blanket ban that treats every use of AI the same doesn’t work for the kids who need it most. Too often, the policy ends up penalizing the kids who already have the hardest time keeping up: kids with learning differences, kids whose parents don’t have the time or education to help with homework, kids who just need a little extra support to get their ideas out of their head and onto the page.
Javi ended up revising his narrative, and turned it in with his messy first draft stapled to the back—half the words are misspelled, there’s a coffee stain in the corner from when his little brother spilled his sippy cup on it, and all the best ideas are already right there on that messy page. The AI just helped him clean it up enough that everyone else could read them too. I gave him full credit for the assignment, after we talked about adding one more detail about his grandmother’s new rose garden.
After class, he told me he’d been scared to turn in any writing that used AI, because he thought he’d get an automatic zero. I told him the rule here is just that your ideas have to be yours first. The administration still hasn’t released any formal guidance for off-campus AI use, and I don’t know if what I’m doing is going to get me in trouble later. Right now, though, it’s working. Kids are still writing, still sharing their stories, and the ones who need a little extra help aren’t getting penalized for it. We’ll figure out the rest as we go.
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