It’s been two weeks since the Secretary of Education stood in front of the country and enthusiastically called AI “A1.” Two saucy weeks since what should’ve been a serious conversation about the future of American education turned into a viral punchline.
And now, in the same surreal timeline, we’ve got President Trump signing an executive order to promote AI in K-12 schools — directing the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation to prioritize funding for AI-related research and grants.
You truly can’t make this stuff up and even if you could, you no longer have to.
To be clear: I’m not anti-technology. AI has a role to play in education. Personalized learning, intelligent tutoring systems, data-driven insights — these are powerful tools when used thoughtfully. But let’s not kid ourselves. We’re living through a moment where the Trump 2 administration is taking a DOGE chainsaw to the very foundations of public education. And instead of confronting that, we’re being told to get excited about chatbots in the classroom.
This isn’t leadership. It’s deflection.
Funding for future success
The truth is, AI is not the lifeline our education system needs. Certainly not right now. What we need — what we’ve needed for decades — is serious investment in teachers, classrooms, infrastructure and support services. And we’re getting the opposite.
The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts to key education programs, gutting federal support for public schools, and pushing policies that favor privatization and deregulation over student success. Amid all that, we’re supposed to believe that some AI-powered lesson plans are going to move the needle?
Please.
Let’s start with the obvious: AI doesn’t fix underfunded schools any more than A1 sauce would. You can’t put an algorithm into a building with no heat, no internet and no functioning restroom and expect a miracle. You can’t expect a teacher managing 35 kids on her own to suddenly have the time and training to integrate AI into daily lesson plans (if they even have the time to make one actual lesson plan a week). And you can’t tell communities that are already struggling to get basic resources that what they really need is machine-learning software.
This executive order assumes that what’s missing in American education is innovation. But we don’t have an innovation problem — we have a priorities problem. Our students aren’t falling behind because teachers aren’t tech-savvy enough. They’re falling behind because our country refuses to treat education like a public good.
What’s broken
We’ve normalized schools with outdated textbooks, overworked staff and dilapidated facilities. We’ve made it acceptable for teachers to buy their own supplies, for students to skip meals, and for mental health crises to go unanswered.
And now, in the middle of that, this administration wants to convince us that the real problem is that we’re not moving fast enough on AI.
Let’s also be honest about what AI in schools usually means. It doesn’t mean teachers getting sophisticated tools that make their jobs easier. It means more standardized testing, more data collection, more screen time and more surveillance, especially for kids in low-income communities.
It means feeding student information into systems built by private companies, often with little oversight or transparency. It means potentially outsourcing educational decisions to algorithms that don’t understand context, nuance (sidebar: do any of us get nuance anymore?) or humanity.
It’s a far cry from the glossy pitch the administration is selling.
Widening the digital divide
And let’s not ignore the inequity intentionally baked into all of this. AI-enhanced education requires reliable internet, up-to-date devices, tech-literate staff and digital infrastructure — things that affluent districts are more likely to have. For schools in underserved areas, this push risks widening the digital divide under the guise of modernization.
What’s being framed as progress is actually an elegant Trojan horse for deeper inequality. The schools that most need real, human-centered support are the least likely to benefit from this initiative.
It’s particularly galling that all this is being rolled out with a heavy dose of PR spin. The A1 comment might’ve been a gaffe, but it was also revealing. It showed just how deeply unserious this administration is about the reality on the ground in American schools. It was meant to sound cool, forward-thinking, maybe even meme-worthy. Instead, it became a symbol of how disconnected Trump’s appointee is from what’s actually happening in classrooms across the country.
What schools really need
Teachers aren’t asking for AI. They’re asking for manageable class sizes, fair pay, mental health resources and the ability to teach without being completely buried by bureaucracy. Students aren’t crying out for machine learning — they’re asking for support, stability and a system that sees them as more than test scores or data points. And parents aren’t begging for the latest edtech. They want to know their kids are safe, challenged and cared for at school.
AI is a tool. That’s it. It’s not a savior, it’s not a substitute, and it’s certainly not a replacement for public investment. If the Trump administration were serious about improving education, it would be fighting to expand school funding, not slash it. The administration would be making college more affordable, not reversing progress on student debt. It would be strengthening teacher pipelines, not weakening them. And it would be protecting public schools, not undermining them.
Instead, we get a photo op and a tech policy wrapped in buzzwords.
So yes, Secretary A1, AI has its place. But until we’re ready to fund schools like they matter, treat educators like professionals, and address the real, systemic issues at the heart of this crisis, all the artificial intelligence in the world won’t save us.
And that’s not artificial. That’s just reality.
Aron Solomon is the chief strategy officer for Amplify. He holds a law degree and has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. His writing has been featured in Newsweek, The Hill, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today and many other publications. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his op-ed in The Independent exposing the NFL’s “race-norming” policies.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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