Students who use AI generally score worse at school
The Verge Dominic Preston ● Covered by 2 sources
Students who use AI to study are scoring lower, OECD data says. But the right kind of AI use, with critical training, can give a small lift.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Dominic Preston — read the original for the full story.
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The new OECD picture is awkward for the AI-in-school crowd: students who use AI to help them study tend to do worse than students who don’t. That’s the broad trend in a global education report, and it lands right as AI use has moved from novelty to routine.
But the report doesn’t flatten everything into a simple thumbs-down. Some forms of AI use are linked to a modest improvement, especially for students who’ve been taught to judge how well the tool is actually doing. That matters, because it suggests the problem isn’t just the software. It’s how students are asked to use it, and whether anyone has taught them to question it.
The data comes from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which collects information from countries around the world every few years. This latest round uses data gathered in 2025, making it the first PISA study done since AI went truly mainstream.
PISA tests 15-year-old students in science, math and reading. So this isn’t a casual survey about tech habits; it’s a look at how those habits line up with actual school performance. And the early read is pretty clear: AI can help, but a lot of students seem to be using it in ways that drag them down instead.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Schools love to act as if handing kids a shiny new tool is the same thing as teaching them to use it. It isn’t. The OECD result is the usual reminder that AI doesn’t magically improve learning any more than a calculator fixes bad arithmetic — it just makes the bad habits faster. Teach skepticism, or get mediocre homework at machine speed.
Read more about this at: The Verge
