If you’ve ever wondered whether AI has 'broken' school, this conversation with Stanford associate professor Victor Lee cuts through the noise and gets to the heart of the issue.

We start by mapping out three lenses every learner needs:

1. The user who applies tools well.
2. The developer who grasps core concepts like models and training data.
3. The critic who sees bias, persuasion, and societal impact.

That trifecta becomes a practical compass for teachers, parents, and leaders trying to decide what matters by the time students graduate.

Victor also shares fresh findings from his widely-cited study on AI and academic integrity:

• Cheating didn’t spike after ChatGPT arrived. The baseline was already high.
• When work is irrelevant or purely procedural, students seek shortcuts.
• When tasks demand interpretation, personal voice, and real evidence, AI becomes a helper rather than a loophole.

We also explore how to rethink writing beyond the five-paragraph essay, turning “writing is thinking” into prompts that reward judgment over regurgitation. Think role-play, multimedia analysis, and context-rich arguments that students can own and AI outputs can’t fake.

Lastly, Victor examined computer science in a world of copilots. Coding isn’t going away, but the value shifts from syntax to decomposition, abstraction, testing, and reasoning about systems. The best AI-assisted developers have strong fundamentals and the same is true in every field — domain knowledge multiplies AI. That’s the essence of AI readiness: deep subject-grounding plus AI fluency and skepticism.

If you care about smarter classroom assessment, meaningful tasks, and preparing students for an AI-shaped world, this episode offers a grounded and hopeful roadmap.

aiEDU: The AI Education Project

• aiEDU.org
• linkedin.com/company/aiedu/

The hardest part of AI in education isn’t picking a tool. It’s deciding what kind of learning we want to protect, elevate, and scale.

On this episode of aiEDU Studios, we dive straight into that question with Sunanna Chand, executive director of The Reinvention Lab at Teach For America.

Sunanna has a clear stance on edtech: focus on talent over technology. Instead of imagining rows of students plugged into personalized dashboards, she explains how strategic, lightweight AI use can help teachers spark curiosity while still building durable skills and making school feel meaningful again.

We talk about what it really takes to change a sprawling K‑12 system (millions of students, thousands of districts, countless constraints) and why organizations with trust and reach matter. Sunanna offers a dual mandate to improve outcomes now while prototyping the models we will need in 5-10 years as AI automates routine tasks. That work means grappling with equity and access, acknowledging that for some students the phone is the Internet, and refusing to let premium AI become a quiet advantage for the privileged.

Of course, it also means drawing clear lines between healthy shortcuts and harmful ones — writing is still thinking, and judgment can’t be outsourced.

If you care about teacher prestige, student agency, durable skills, and using AI without losing our humanity, this conversation is for you.

Learn about about Sunanna Chand and The Reinvention Lab at Teach For America:

• https://reinventionlab.org/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunannachand/

aiEDU: The AI Education Project

• aiEDU.org
• linkedin.com/company/aiedu/

Teaching at Rikers Island isn’t a typical origin story for a future school district leader. And yet, it demonstrates that education works best as human development, not a test-prep machine.

Former Chicago Public Schools CEO J.C. Brizard joins aiEDU Studios to talk about modern-day school systems and what to keep, what to scrap, and how to move faster than technology that's reshaping our jobs and lives.

We got candid about why AI has finally brought school to the dinner table. When a novice can ship working software and a manager can draft team evaluations within hours, the question shifts from “Which tools?” to “What makes us human?” The answer lies in durable skills: curiosity, agency, communication, problem-solving, and the courage to navigate ambiguity.

Those aren’t “soft” skills — they are the skills that help students change jobs, create value, and lead with judgment as machines take on more tasks.

If you care about students thriving in an AI-shaped economy and building a more humane one, this conversation offers a roadmap you can use now.

After listening, let us know what route you'll take in your class, school, or district!

Learn more about J.C. Brizard:

• https://digitalpromise.org/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-claude-brizard-0080a810/

aiEDU: The AI Education Project

• aiEDU.org
• linkedin.com/company/aiedu/