Welcome to the ‘Funky’ Politics of the Tech in Schools Debate - Education Week

So Utah has decided the best way to prepare children for an AI-saturated future is to legislatively wall them off from it, with a new law that bars schools from using AI to grade work or make high-stakes decisions about student learning. According to Education Week, this is part of a 'funky' political trend sweeping at least 17 states, where lawmakers are rushing to introduce restrictions on AI in classrooms. Because nothing says 'thoughtful educational policy' like reactive legislation drafted by people who likely think a large language model is something you'd find at a library conference.

The irony is delicious: these same legislators will almost certainly demand AI literacy be taught in those very schools, while simultaneously forbidding the tools that would make such literacy meaningful. Utah's specific prohibition against AI grading and high-stakes decisions creates the perfect bureaucratic paradox — teachers can use AI to generate lesson plans or answer student questions, but heaven forbid it help with the tedious work of assessment. One can already picture the compliance paperwork: 'Please certify this C+ was assigned by human hand, not silicon.'

This is regulatory theatre at its most performative. Seventeen states scrambling to look 'proactive' by banning applications that barely exist at scale in education yet, while the actual frontier models continue their exponential climb in capabilities completely unchecked. The 'funky politics' label is apt — it's all style, no substance, a legislative dance that keeps administrators busy with new rules while the real transformation happens elsewhere. At this rate, by the time these laws are fully implemented, the AI they're trying to regulate will have evolved into something they can't even conceptualise, let alone contain.