School work is still a topic of debate, but in 2025 it faces an existential problem: has artificial intelligence and its immediate responses make it useless or disabled?
Research released this month shows that AI has become completely embedded in how students respond to homework and other assignments.
The percentage of high school students reporting using school AI is increasing, rising from 89% to 84% between January and this year, the non-profit that administers the nation’s standardized tests, including the SAT.
That means that increasing numbers of students are coming to do their homework in Ayi – even if it’s in Pril. AI can solve math problem and show step by step task. Can summarize and analyze a reading passage. It can write an entire article, in ways that are hard to see.
Inglewood High School English Alyssa Bolden learned from one of her students that AI could customize an essay by entering the student’s notes by including bolden’s expressions and her unique assessment rubric.
Ai gave him a strong reason to consider homework useless.
“They didn’t do it,” he said of the districts and homemaking. “They didn’t.”
Alyssa Bolden, an English teacher at City Holors International Purgared Englewood, had students write essays in class by hand to reduce their use of AI. He doesn’t do homework.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Other teachers, however, continue to assign homework, which introduces a new tension in the learning relationship, said 10th-grader Aaliyah Herron, 15, who is one of Bolden’s students at City Honors International Preparatory High School. In other classes, he finds himself proving his innocence given the quality of his work.
He avoids eliminating any possibility that he might be accused of using it improperly: “My articles will be marked as AI for no reason – even if I don’t have AI in any single paper in my life.”
Basically, AI puts the problem of a preexisting problem: Often, educators have thought too little about school work, says Mollie Galloway, a professor at the graduate school of education and counseling at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon.
“It’s always been important to think about how to create assignments that benefit you and deepen learning, and the increasing use of AI makes that more true than ever,” Galloway said.
The Debate of Old and New Work
Many educators remain old-fashioned in school work, with views similar to those of Lance Izumi, executive director of the education center at the California-based Pacific Research Institute.
“Imagine getting math instruction for just an hour a day,” Izumi said. “Does all of the mathematics of learning learn in the student’s brain at that time? Without homework, most students will not develop the knowledge base necessary for academic success.”
In Izumi’s view, the students didn’t get enough homework. “Apart from skills and knowledge, homework teaches students discipline, organization, time management, responsibility, and accountability.”
Students attend La Tijera Academy of Excellence in Inglewood.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
There is research that supports this idea. Many studies have found that students who have done their homework are more likely to manage tasks and time better.
But it stands and raises the alarm that the full use of AI can counter the benefits of homework by enabling the laziness of cut-and-pass.
Aaliyah said such concerns are legitimate.
“Most of my classmates, in math … they really don’t care how they do it. They just want you to do it,” she said. “So when they’re tested on it” — without getting AI — “they won’t really be able to do it.”
Emilio Torres, a classmate of Aaliyah, said that such an article “may wake them up as one subject, but they easily go back to the AI and do it again, and the cycle repeats itself.”
He uses AI exclusively. For example, you will ask Ai to create study questions for research.
“AI is definitely an effective tool for doing certain things,” said 15-year-old Emilio. “I train myself not to rely on it.”
Part of the pre-AI debate focused on the amount of homework – many teachers sitting on 10 minutes a day repeated the grade. So, for example, a student in grade 12 can expect to get 120 minutes a day of homework.
More is not better, according to Success Challenge, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate School.
“Middle school students who typically completed two hours of homework did not do better in school than those who only got to that one hour,” concluded a 2020 review of the study.
Although the opinions of teachers in school work are wide, many researchers think that they are beginning to reach additional conclusions, including those benefits of the states of primary school students, other benefits of high-level students.
Students await the celebration of high test scores at La Tijera Academy of Excellence.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
That Another Teacher Evaluates Homework
Fourth-grade Sherman Oaks teacher Libby Rosebaum is trying to apply research findings — and her students, so far, are too young to be deeply affected by AI.
“Schoolwork should not affect a student’s academic Grade,” Rosenbaum said. “Grades should be based on the Mastery of Standard. Schoolwork is not a measure.
“Giving a class full of kids a 20-problem assignment is not productive,” she said. “Children who struggle with mental illness are unlikely to suddenly understand you at home, and may put unnecessary strain on the parent-child relationship. Children who understand don’t need 20 problems.”
Instead, you set a weekly menu of false choices, in blocks of 15- 20 minutes: quality time with a loved one, time spent organizing something at home or teaching someone else a skill. Tasks are assigned on appropriate Mondays and Fridays.
“This home practice provides the benefits of homework: Time Management, Work Discipline and Responsibility, with the added benefit of strengthening the whole child’s circulation and time,” said Rosenbaum. “We work a hard day during the school day. They need sports, rest, social time, family time, and other life experiences outside of the school day.
“The only end of this policy is when students choose to be ineffective during the school day and need to take homework to complete it,” or they need more revision, but it should be included in the spelling practice. “
Middle School History Teacher Pilar Cuevas talks to students in her class at La Tijera Academy of Excelle. Cuevas has his Student Handwritten and other assignments in a format that makes it very difficult for them to use AI in homework assignments.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Getting homework right
Aryn Kennedy, whose daughter is from Armstrong in the San Fernando Valley, remembers that “many nights we spent time finalizing news papers, well designed for her daughter with articles.
But he also sees some benefits.
“Doing math problems at home helps strengthen lessons at school because they don’t have time to work on all the staff in the classroom.”
Middle School History Teacher Pilar Cuevas, at Inglewood’s La Tijera Acavas of Excerence, relies heavily on school-provided computers for homework and videos. Home questions and answers must be written by hand – making the use of AI difficult. Professional colleagues rely on the same system, which accounts for part of the recent rise in test scores.
RELESH-GREDERS RELLEETEETEE, 12, and Phelps Mauricio, 12, eat snowballs together during a celebration of high test scores at La Tijera Academy of Excelle.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Some experts have noted that homework has the negative potential to create gaps between students from the level of economic and family support – which is why Inglewood’s bold target began to be removed from homework.
Family resources and support, students’ attitudes and beliefs about their learning abilities are ‘associated with the completion of homework,’ writes Associate Professor Joyce L. Epstein, in an analysis of homework research.
Epsterin, which is based at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, said that the email provided by the school staff is the key.
In middle and high school, “some students stop doing homework that they don’t enjoy, whether it’s too hard, too easy, etc.,” she said.
And that was before AI made avoiding work at home easier.
School work needs to be meaningful, given that it can add to the stress of students and can get in the way of good communication with family members and peers, important outdoor activities and sleep, experts say.
Epsterin’s findings indicated that nearly 80% of students, teachers and parents said homework was important or very important to increased learning and success in school. But the same survey reported that up to a third of students, teachers and parents rated the quality of some homework as good, poor, consistent or busy work.
“Increasingly, educators and researchers agree that students don’t need more homework, but they need better homework,” Epstein said. “With more interesting, creative assignments, more students will complete their homework.”
