{"id":143397,"date":"2026-08-18T09:13:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/143397\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T09:13:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:13:21","slug":"the-trailblazing-school-on-the-frontier-of-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/143397\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trailblazing School on the Frontier of Artificial Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Classroom <\/p>\n

WLA teachers have deployed AI in instruction in a variety of innovative ways.<\/p>\n

In Giani Clarkson\u2019s AP Government class, for example, students studied imperialism by designing a country\u2019s resources to resist being conquered by \u201cClarksonia,\u201d a fictional nation Clarkson controls. They input their country into a chatbot to see whether they could survive a three-year simulated war against Clarksonia, allocating its population across soldiers, scientists, artists, and educators, and selecting a key natural resource. The bot delivered a verdict on each simulated country, revealing Clarksonia\u2019s resources for comparison but not explaining why a country won or lost; this forced students to think through the causes themselves. \u201cIt\u2019s not good enough to just tell them, \u2018This is how it happened,\u2019\u201d Clarkson said. \u201cThey have to see it in real time and kick the tires themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond teaching students how AI works and how to use it, WLA is exposing students to AI\u2019s limitations.<\/p>\n

Niyesha Coleman, the school\u2019s math instructional coach, built a gamified chatbot that walked students through practice problems, offering hints and feedback in a voice trained to sound like hers. Students had to explain their reasoning for every answer, and sometimes, Coleman noted, the bot got the answer wrong, and students had to defend their thinking against the incorrect response. It was a lesson in both mathematical reasoning and the limits of AI.<\/p>\n

WLA students seem to be getting the message. In a fall 2025 survey, two-thirds of the school\u2019s students reported that they had learned strategies for effectively using AI tools, such as crafting prompts, evaluating output, and selecting the right tool\u2014key components of AI literacy. But 70 percent said they thought AI could be both helpful and harmful in their schoolwork.<\/p>\n

\"Juniors<\/a>Juniors Cairea and Keilly work on a presentation for their AP Psychology class. Teacher Adam Browning used AI to adapt the course\u2019s curriculum after College Board changed the exam for the 2024\u201325 school year.<\/p>\n

That raises an obvious question: Does AI help students learn? A March 2026 Stanford<\/a> review of 14 AI research studies revealed mixed results: Students performed better in math, writing, economics, and physics when they were able to use AI tools in their schoolwork. But gains often disappeared when they lost access to AI. The review also found that AI could reduce students\u2019 \u201ccognitive burden,\u201d making academic tasks feel easier, but sometimes at the expense of deeper thinking and long-term retention. Tools designed with \u201cguardrails\u201d\u2014such as tutoring chatbots that offer students hints rather than direct answers\u2014show more promise in supporting long-term learning than general-purpose chatbots that hand students the answer, the review found. The lesson is not that AI inherently helps or harms learning but that its effects depend on how it is designed and deployed.<\/p>\n

WLA leaders believe it\u2019s too early to draw conclusions about AI\u2019s impact on their students\u2019 learning, that the relationship between AI use and test scores or other formal measures isn\u2019t yet clear. But some teachers are encouraged by what they\u2019ve seen in their classrooms. Since implementing the chatbot for practice problems in her math class, Coleman has watched students who once struggled to engage with content or tasks become more confident, more willing to take risks, and more invested in their learning\u2014changes she believes will translate into stronger academic outcomes over time. Teachers at WLA, meanwhile, are using AI to support students in ways that weren\u2019t previously possible.<\/p>\n

Adam Browning, WLA\u2019s director of academic innovation and AP Psychology teacher, used the new technology to address a typical problem. The College Board, the organization that writes Advanced Placement exams, recently overhauled the AP Psychology curriculum, leaving teachers with few practice questions to give their students. So, he created an AI tool that generated questions modeled on the few already released by the College Board. Students submitted answers to a chatbot, which gave them immediate feedback and flagged Browning if they continued to struggle. The system has more than doubled scores on practice questions.<\/p>\n

WLA teachers are also using AI to address the day-to-day administrative challenges that plague their professional lives.<\/p>\n

Clarkson, for example, uses AI to generate a weekly newsletter for the parents of his 86 students, something he says he would never have time to do otherwise. The newsletter keeps parents informed about upcoming assignments and office hours and offers words of encouragement, bridging the gap between home and the classroom. Informed parents often mean better supported students, both at home and in school, Clarkson says.<\/p>\n

Educators across the nation are also experimenting with using AI for administrative tasks. In the 2024\u201325 school year, 3 in 10 teachers<\/a> nationwide reported reducing the time they spend on such tasks by up to 11 percent, or roughly six hours a week, by using AI.<\/p>\n

While WLA teachers have embraced AI to handle the behind-the-scenes work of teaching, the school has also begun integrating AI into its operations. Mark Deegan, the school\u2019s chief innovation officer, has led the effort to automate workflows that staff once managed manually. AI now centralizes daily attendance data on a single dashboard, synthesized with a historical record of absences so that staff can identify and reach out to struggling students before their truancy becomes chronic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the Classroom WLA teachers have deployed AI in instruction in a variety of innovative ways. In Giani…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,30280,1604,560,16719,25,70636,70637,70638,70639,14362,1172,223,26469,70640,134,70641,39955,4676,70642,17509,70643],"class_list":["post-143397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-bots","tag-ai-chatbot","tag-ai-literacy","tag-ai-tutors","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-charter-high-school","tag-charter-high-schools","tag-charter-school","tag-charter-schools","tag-education-technology","tag-educational-technology","tag-generative-ai","tag-hackathon","tag-tara-moon","tag-technology","tag-technology-and-schooling","tag-technology-integration","tag-washington-d-c","tag-washington-d-c-charter-schools","tag-washington-dc","tag-washington-leadership-academy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}