# Under-resourced schools face pressure to adopt unproven AI tools as companies chase profit, students and educators say > AI companies are pushing unproven chatbots into underfunded U.S. schools that serve students of color, with Stanford researchers finding almost no causal evidence the tools improve learning. - Type: AI news - Page: https://completeaitraining.com/news/under-resourced-schools-face-pressure-to-adopt-unproven-ai/ - Published: 2026-11-09 - Updated: 2026-11-09 - Author: Jeroen Erne - Jobs: Creatives, Education, Healthcare, Human resources, Legal, Writers - Reading time: 4 min A growing chorus of students, educators, and policy analysts say AI companies are exploiting chronic understaffing and funding gaps in U.S. schools, pushing unproven technology into classrooms that primarily serve students of color. The sales pitches, they argue, distract from structural solutions like hiring more teachers and instead funnel limited public dollars into corporate pockets. "The ed tech industry is profiting off of running a race with school districts to see who's going to adopt their chatbot or whatever their tech piece is, and it's forced on students," said Tara Donnelly, a high school librarian and member of the Chicago Teachers Union's AI working group. "Students should have the opportunity to refuse to use AI if they want to. They deserve to have the whole picture and not just to be the money-maker for these ed tech pieces." Donnelly works at Foreman College and Career Academy, a predominantly Latine school on Chicago's Northwest Side. Many of her students are immigrants or first-generation Americans. After-school tutoring exists on paper, but the student body was hit hard by immigration raids last year. "There's not a lot of after-school life within the school," she said. "So it's tough to get extra help." #### Students turn to chatbots when human help is scarce Yeisbel Peña, a Latino high school senior in Boston, described classrooms where one teacher assists 10 or 20 students. "All of them trying to get one-on-one help, it definitely gets very diluted," he said. "So you definitely don't get the best quality of help." When homework questions pile up and no tutor is available, students at his charter school, which mostly serves students of color, often turn to chatbots instead. Peña, who plans to study computer science, believes the old model of direct instruction works best. "When you have AI, it just says 'yes,' constantly. Any question you ask, it'll probably just tell you yes," he said. "It won't give you complexity. And I believe that that complexity that you get from being in a classroom with a teacher … without it, you're kind of just limiting yourself." In Raleigh, North Carolina, 17-year-old Sacdiya Rashid said chatbots have helped her understand difficult math problems, but she sees commercial motives at work. "I think these AI companies are trying to benefit off of students, like, struggling students," she said. "I don't think we should really blame students for these AI companies and \[the\] narratives they're trying to push. Because I think it just hurts the students." #### Limited evidence, aggressive sales tactics Despite the rapid spread of AI chatbots and AI-enabled tools in schools, there is extremely limited causal evidence that the technology improves learning outcomes. Stanford University's SCALE Initiative conducted a meta-analysis of K-12 education studies earlier this year and found few randomized control trials or quasi-experimental studies on the subject. "It's really hard to conduct randomized control trials … so there just aren't a lot of those studies right now," said Lily Fesler, a senior research associate at SCALE. Still, cash-strapped districts may feel they have little choice. Hannah Quay-de la Vallee, a senior technologist at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said schools with unrestricted funds can choose to hire staff or launch enrichment programs. "In other cases, you're going to have schools that have funding that has to be spent on tech," she said. A CDT report published in August found that administrative AI use could cause disparate impacts - AI content filters might block material related to immigration or sexual orientation, and predictive analytics designed to flag "at-risk" students could mistakenly target students of color. Alisha Maynoush Mernick, an organizer with Schools Beyond Screens in Los Angeles, described the dynamic as predatory. "Everyone is stretched so thin. Education is so deeply devalued and de-professionalized and defunded. We are all so desperate to the point where, when a sales pitch comes in, someone is willing to just shake hands and sign the contract," she said. "It feels very predatory to be coming to the most under-resourced schools and communities and trying to sell these things, and trying to frame it as giving out of their own goodwill." Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a steering committee member with New York City's AI Moratorium Coalition, framed the bind plainly: "If we don't have the opportunity to invest in that human capital - because it's going to take too long, because we can't find the teacher, because we can't find the interventionist - then \[people say\], OK, well maybe this could be the next best thing." #### The long push to embed tech in public education Recent reporting has documented tech companies' decades-long effort to weave their products into U.S. schools. Journalist Natasha Singer has traced Google's strategy to hook students early on services like Gmail and Chrome, with the real revenue coming later through data collection and targeted advertising. Schools have spent tens of billions of dollars on Chromebooks and other ed tech programs since that push began, and adoption accelerated during the pandemic. The Trump administration has encouraged wholesale AI adoption in education, signing a 2025 executive order to promote AI integration for youth and teachers. Industry lobbyists continue to press for anti-regulatory policies, sidelining academic researchers. Mernick sees the pattern as a symptom of a larger problem. "This is just one symptom of a much, much larger problem, which is that when we underfund public schools, we are creating an opportunity for companies to swoop in. That's privatization in a nutshell," she said. "It really is just funneling public taxpayer money out of public institutions and into corporate pockets." #### Why this matters for educators, legal professionals, and writers For educators and school administrators, the pressure to adopt AI tools without evidence of efficacy raises legal and ethical questions about fiduciary duty and student privacy. Districts that spend restricted funds on unproven technology may face scrutiny - and potential civil rights complaints if AI systems produce disparate impacts. Legal professionals working with school systems should examine vendor contracts for data usage terms and assess liability around automated decision-making tools. Writers and content professionals covering education technology should track the growing body of research from groups like Stanford's SCALE Initiative and the Center for Democracy & Technology. Those shaping policy can explore structured training on these issues through [AI Public Policy Courses](https://completeaitraining.com/learningpath/ai-for-policy-makers/), while secondary educators seeking to build AI literacy in their classrooms may find relevant frameworks in [AI Secondary Education Courses](https://completeaitraining.com/learningpath/ai-for-secondary-school-teachers/). --- This is the Markdown form of https://completeaitraining.com/news/under-resourced-schools-face-pressure-to-adopt-unproven-ai/. The whole site is mapped at https://completeaitraining.com/llms.txt.