AI guidance critique, PEP meeting on Wed., and AI strategy meeting May 6

April 26, 2026

1.     We now have a one-page critique of the painfully inadequate DOE AI guidance, plus a longer, detailed analysis here.  I’m also offering an annotated pdf version of the guidance itself with our comments appended. Links to all these docs are posted here, along with suggestions on how to respond to the DOE feedback survey, which has a deadline for response of May 8. Please take a look and share!

2.     The New Yorker ran a terrific article last week by Jessica Winter on how AI is undermining education across the country that quotes members of our AI Moratorium coalition; check it out here. [If it’s behind the paywall, try this.]

It describes the troubling links between DOE executives and the ed tech companies whose AI products are being forced on NYC students. It also recounts how the reporter’s own 6^th grade daughter is now prompted by Google Gemini to use its AI suggestions every time she logs into her school-supplied Chromebook, “like a creepy neighbor.” We have heard from teachers that in recent weeks Google Gemini has also been installed on many student Chromebooks used in NYC schools, including in some cases elementary grade students.

The New Yorker article quotes misleading responses from a DOE spokesperson, that “more than a thousand stakeholders, including families and educators, were ‘engaged’ in drafting” the AI guidance, though I know of no families who were consulted, unless they mean the families of ed tech executives. The DOE also defensively claims that “while Amira and MagicSchool are used in some schools, the city has no centralized contract for either product” while neglecting to mention that the reason DOE has no contract for Amira is because it was put up for a vote by the DOE but rejected four times by the Panel for Educational Policy.

3.     Please join us to speak out against the AI Next Gen HS, which is to be voted on this Wednesday, April 29, 2026, at the PEP meeting at 6:00 pm at MS 131 on 100 Hester Street. The privacy policy for the AI-powered Skills Platform that the principal of the Next Gen school has said will be relied upon says it should not be used for anyone under 18.

We will be gathering in front of the MS 131 at 5 PM; and from 5:30 to 6:15 PM you can also sign up to speak at the meeting, either at the school or via a link found here. But you can only speak if you attend in person.

If you do attend the meeting, I encourage you to provide comments on the capital plan as well — which is also up for a vote – especially if your school is too overcrowded to lower class size. The current capital plan will create fewer than one half of the seats necessary to comply with the class size law, according to the SCA.

4.     In any case, whether you can attend the PEP meeting or not, we will be co-sponsoring a strategy session on the dangers of AI use in schools with suggestions on how to make your voice heard on Tuesday May 6 at 6 PM. You can reserve your spot here.

5.     Finally, don’t forget to buy a ticket to our May 19 Skinny award dinner to honor the great and indispensable Diane Ravitch, and to support our work going forward.

Thanks, Leonie