Different School Systems Are Drawing Different Lines

Schools in the United States and Europe took very different approaches to AI this week. Some blocked general chatbots, some approved specific tools, and some limited AI by age or subject.

What Happened This Week

On July 28, Columbus County Schools in rural North Carolina announced that when its students return in a few weeks, ChatGPT will be blocked on district devices.¹²

On June 23, Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre told his country that when its youngest students return to classrooms in August, they will not be using generative AI in school.³⁴

On July 19, ninety-eight high school students from all fifty states voted 82 to 16 to pass a bill they had spent three days writing themselves.⁵⁶

On August 12, an AI-first private school called Alpha opens two new campuses in Oklahoma, one in Edmond and one in Tulsa, at forty thousand dollars a year.⁷⁸

On July 20, Dr.⁹¹⁰

What These Stories Have in Common

There is no single rule that fits every student and every task. Younger students, high-stakes assessments, and open-ended projects raise different educational risks.

Koan starts from a simple premise. The final answer is no longer a reliable measure of learning. Schools need to understand how students reached that answer and whether the work made them more capable.

What Schools Can Do

Schools should set boundaries based on developmental stage and learning purpose. They should explain those boundaries clearly and choose tools that can follow them in practice.

A thoughtful AI policy is specific about who is learning, what they are learning, and what help should remain available.