GoKawiil
Tech News
New York City's school system, serving nearly 600,000 pre-K through middle school students, began a one-year pause on generative AI use starting September 2. Los Angeles Unified followed with a similar restriction, blocking AI tools on all district-issued devices for its students.
Frontline Education, an edtech provider of workforce management software for school districts, is notifying affected districts that attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party application to access its systems on August 14, 2026. Exposed data for at least one impacted district included employees' Social Security numbers, email addresses and physical addresses. Frontline has not identified the third-party product involved or said when unauthorized access began, and school IT administrators have been confirming the notifications' legitimacy on online forums.
Google has been expanding its AI tools into school classrooms, with students and educators reporting both benefits and drawbacks. Some students described AI assistance as slowing their own thinking, while reports point to falling test scores alongside concerns about cognitive and emotional dependence on the technology.
Education writer Benjamin Riley's reporting alleges that Alpha School, a $75,000-a-year private school network marketed around AI tutoring, has students monitored via laptop webcams and heart-rate monitors, with wrong answers reviewed on Zoom calls by workers reportedly based in India rather than by AI systems. Former students describe feeling surveilled like lab subjects, and academic Matt Seybold has linked the practice to what he calls AI's 'Mechanical Turk problem,' where human labor from the Global South stands in for automated systems.
In her new book, New York Times reporter Natasha Singer documents how Apple, Microsoft and other tech companies embedded themselves in K-12 education over the past 15 years, supplying free coding curricula and tools like Swift and Minecraft to promote computer science as a path to jobs. She argues AI companies are now pitching schools with a nearly identical playbook, offering free resources while cultivating future customers and workers.
upGrad has completed an all-stock acquisition of Unacademy, valuing the Bengaluru-based edtech startup at roughly $206 million—about 94% below its 2021 peak valuation of $3.44 billion. CEO Gaurav Munjal confirmed the deal's closing on X, noting that Unacademy shareholders received upGrad shares while angel investors were cashed out.
Chalkbeat reporting found Sal Khan and his Chief Learning Officer Kristen DiCerbo conceding that Khanmigo, the AI tutoring chatbot launched three years ago with sweeping ambitions, barely got used by students and hasn't transformed education. Commentator Dan Meyer separately chronicled the project's decline from bold TED talk claims and philanthropic backing to shrinking usage projections despite major advantages like early OpenAI access and Microsoft support.