AI in the Classroom: Will It Transform Delaware Education?
AI should make learning better—not make schoolwork easier. Caesar Rodney Institute | Knowledge • Freedom • Prosperity
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are making their way into Delaware classrooms. AI systems are rapidly becoming more capable, but evidence on their risks is slow to emerge and difficult to assess. A 2026 Stanford University review of AI research in K–12 education warns that AI is no replacement for the acquisition of knowledge, skills, critical thinking, and productive struggle that form the building blocks students need to do the intellectual work themselves.
The biggest danger is if AI performs the cognitive work that students first need to learn how to do on their own.
The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) recognizes that AI can improve teaching, personalize learning, and reduce teacher workload when used appropriately. But used poorly, AI can encourage cognitive offloading, weaken critical thinking, and potentially widen achievement gaps. DDOE is working with the AI Policy Lab, a multistate initiative that brings state education agencies together to develop policies and safeguards for the use of AI in schools, to answer questions about how AI tools perform.
Delaware has been developing its approach for more than two years. In 2024, the Delaware Council on Educational Technology, through DDOE, issued generative AI guidance and has since added classroom-management, acceptable-use, and media-literacy resources. But the foundational guidance remains voluntary: district and charter leaders “may use this guidance” to shape local policies, and Delaware has not established binding statewide rules governing when students may directly use generative AI.
The question is not whether to use AI in the classroom, but how best to ensure that AI strengthens long-term learning rather than replacing it. Its potential and limitations must be integrated into a clear set of statewide guardrails for Delaware school districts to follow.
What We Know and Don’t Know About AI in Education
AI can improve productivity, provide immediate feedback, personalize instruction, and help teachers manage their workloads. But better performance on a task does not necessarily mean better learning.
A peer-reviewed study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences involving nearly 1,000 high school math students found that AI could make students look more successful while reducing what they learned. Students using unrestricted GPT-4 performed 48% better when the AI was available—but 17% worse when they had to work independently. A version designed with guardrails reduced that decline. The lesson is clear: schools should not measure AI's success by whether students complete work faster or score higher with AI. They must ask whether students can still perform the work successfully without AI.
Much is still unknown about the long-term effects of AI in education. The 2026 OECD Digital Education Outlook, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), points to the need for more long-term research to learn whether frequent AI assistance produces more durable learning gains, how dependence on AI affects independent writing and reasoning over time, to what extent educators may become overly reliant on AI, and which forms of AI use produce the greatest educational benefit.
Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten has acknowledged the same evidence gap. In June 2026 testimony before a U.S. Senate education subcommittee, she wrote that “technology adoption alone is not success” and that success depends on whether students learn more, educators receive better support, and families trust the systems being built.
Schools also need to look carefully at how AI vendors measure whether their products improve student learning. AI vendors often measure what students can produce with the technology because those results are immediate and easy to demonstrate for marketing purposes. But education is ultimately about the knowledge students retain.
Students Need to Learn to Think Before AI Thinks for Them
Learning requires mental effort. Students need foundational knowledge stored in long-term memory to reason effectively, evaluate information, and recognize errors—including errors produced by AI. A student who lacks the reading skills, historical knowledge, or mathematical fluency needed to evaluate an AI response may not recognize when the response is wrong, biased, or fabricated.
This is why Delaware should adopt a Brains-First Principle: AI should not perform cognitive tasks that students are expected to learn to perform independently. DDOE's K–5 media-literacy guidance already moves in this direction. It notes that most generative AI platforms are not designed or permitted for elementary-age students and recommends that young students build foundational skills with minimal AI assistance. But these are recommendations, not statewide requirements governing when students should begin using AI or requiring evidence that AI actually improves learning.
Guardrails for AI in Delaware Classrooms
Establish Evidence of Learning Before Adoption
DDOE should require evidence of sustainable educational effectiveness before schools purchase or widely deploy AI tools. Evaluation should consider whether a product improves durable learning, not simply task completion. Vendor claims alone do not constitute sufficient evidence.
Brains Before Bots
AI should support learning, not replace the cognitive work through which learning occurs. Students should do the thinking before AI intervenes. AI should not draft an essay, solve a math problem, or perform reasoning that a student is expected to master independently. In early elementary grades, AI assistance should be avoided until students master the building blocks of foundational literacy, numeracy, memory retrieval, and problem-solving skills.
Academic Integrity: Assess Student Learning, Not AI-Enhanced Performance
Because AI makes traditional homework and take-home assignments harder to authenticate, schools will need to place greater emphasis on process-based assessment. Oral explanations, in-class writing, rough drafts, demonstrations, and other forms of human assessment can help teachers determine what students understand.
Teach AI Literacy Before—and Alongside—AI Use
Teachers and students should learn how AI works, ethics, where it fails, and how to challenge its answers. AI can become an object of critical inquiry: students can identify errors, test claims against evidence, and critique AI-generated arguments. Students cannot effectively evaluate such information if they lack the fundamental knowledge to be able to weigh evidence and opposing viewpoints.
Human Oversight: Keep Teachers in Control
Teachers must retain instructional control within a statewide framework that establishes strong protections for human-centered student learning. Educators need training to determine when AI enhances instruction and when human “unplugged” engagement is more appropriate. Teachers must resist the temptation to become overly reliant on AI. After all, they are still the key figures in encouraging students to stick with the struggles that come with learning difficult material.
Student Data Privacy and Protection
Schools should minimize the collection of student data, require transparency to parents about how data are used and retained, and prohibit the use of student information for unrelated commercial purposes.
Delaware's student-data privacy law may not protect students using general-purpose AI tools. Delaware's Student Data Privacy Protection Act protects student data handled by covered operators, including services designed and marketed for K–12 school purposes, but expressly excludes general-audience services. As general-purpose AI tools become more common, Delaware should examine whether that exclusion leaves a gap in student protection.
Delaware’s AI Classroom Debate Has Already Begun
The issue is likely to return to Delaware lawmakers. In 2026, House Substitute 1 for House Bill 404 proposed a three-year AI and extended-reality pilot in up to 12 Delaware public schools. The House passed it June 30, but the bill did not advance in the Senate before adjournment.
Delaware is not alone in confronting how AI should be used in education. Tennessee, Ohio, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Florida have established statewide requirements governing how schools adopt or use AI. Florida's 2026 State Board of Education rules include parental notice and choice, additional review for tools used with younger children, and review of whether AI tools improve student outcomes. Oklahoma's 2026 Responsible Technology in Schools Act requires teacher direction, human review of AI output, age-appropriate student tools, parental disclosure, and district AI policies.
A Smarter Path Forward: AI Should Strengthen Learning, Not Replace It
Delaware does not have to choose between embracing AI and protecting students.
It can do both. The test is simple: Does AI help students learn to think, or does it think for them? Delaware’s educational future should be defined by how effectively educators use evolving technology to advance learning while protecting human thought, teacher judgment, and student data.
AI will transform education. But transformation is not the same as improvement.
Delaware should embrace what AI can do while demanding evidence that it actually helps students learn. The goal should not be more technology in Delaware classrooms.
The goal should be better learning—and AI should earn its place by delivering it.
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