Most American adults think artificial intelligence will do more harm than good in education, and a growing share say schools that reject the technology will serve students better than schools that adopt it — but nobody running the system is asking them.
According to the NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey, the public's verdict on AI in the classroom is in, and it's ugly. Most adults surveyed say AI is a net negative for education. More believe schools that shun AI will actually help students grow more than schools that embrace it. The trend is moving against the technology, not toward it.
That puts parents and ordinary citizens squarely at odds with the alliance of tech companies and school administrators racing to wire AI into curricula nationwide. The poll numbers confirm what working families already sense: decisions about what happens in the classroom are being made in boardrooms and district offices, not at kitchen tables.
NBC News framed the poll as a simple data point in a broader political roundup, burying it beneath coverage of Trump's North Carolina rally and other items. The network didn't explore who profits from AI adoption in schools, who lobbies for it, or why parents are being sidelined in the decision. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the other outlet in this synthesis, didn't cover the AI-in-schools story at all — its reporting focused on a U.N. fact-finding mission alleging U.S. war crimes in Iran, including a strike on a school in Minab that killed at least 168 people, most of them children, according to Iranian state media.
The money trail on classroom AI is the story NBC didn't chase. Tech firms stand to collect billions in contracts when districts adopt AI platforms for grading, tutoring, and administration. School administrators get to tout "innovation" on district websites. What parents get is less say over how their children learn — and less human instruction when the algorithm takes over.
The poll makes clear the public isn't buying the sales pitch. Americans see the harm. They're watching the same education establishment that couldn't keep schools open or teach kids to read during COVID now insist that unproven AI tools are the answer. Trust, once burned, doesn't come back easy.
The open question is whether anyone with power will listen. The poll says parents don't want this. The educrats and tech companies say they're doing it anyway. In a country where local control of schools was supposed to be the rule, that gap between what families demand and what institutions impose is the whole story.
